Romance: a novel by Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer ; illustrated by Charles R. Macauley

ROMANCE

OTHER BOOKS
BY JOSEPH CONRAD

e

Lord Fim, Youth, Falk, Typhoon

Full of men who writhed and tumbled over each other .. »

wOesb Pony CO N RAD
AN D

Pee EE UE FoF ER

LL LUST RATTLED: BY

CHARLES “Rea MA CAULEY

New York : McClure, Philips & Co. : Memiv

Copyright, 1903, by
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

Published, March, 1904

Second Impression

To
ELSIE AND JESSIE

ROMANCE
8€ C’ est toi gui dors dans P ombre, 6 sacré Souvenir.””

If we could have remembrance now
And see, as in the days to come

. We shall, what’s venturous in these hours :
The swift, intangible romance of fields at home,
The gleams of sun, the showers,
Our workaday contentments, or our powers
To fare still forward through the uncharted haze
Of present days.

For, looking back when years shall flow
Upon this olden day that’s now,

We'll see, romantic in dimn’d hours,
These memories of ours.

CONTENTS

PAGE
PART FIRST
THE QUARRY AND THE BEACH, . s eee A A a
PART SECOND
THE GIRL WiTH THE LIZarpD, . “ : : : eas

PART THIRD

Casa RIEco, . ‘ eee a : ‘ : 3 oy ETS

PART FOURTH

BLADE AND GUITAR, ‘ : 4 : 5 é APIS

PART FIFTH
Tue Lor or Man, . ; ° 5 : a 7 805

1
* aN

hs

PIS) Ob TLEUSTRA TIONS

Full of men who writhed and tumbled over each
GENCEA I ices Sys cag etna od Jie ram ape agiere

FACING
PAGE

sliake.a fool's advice, and scoot”? 8.) he a ee ae

I felt that the light of Romance was going out of my
Meoherrgs Vocal So sl Ned Reta 5), beh ace ie a cas Ae

Castro, on his hands and knees, startled me by whisper-
ine-at my-feet: “Stand aside, sefior”. . . . . E66

Standing there, in the midst of the whispering, bare-
headed, kneeling, and villainous crowd, I had a
vivid vision of her pale, dim, pitiful face. . . . 190

Like a shadow thrown from afar . . . upon a snowy
SHCCL wa ace us, x oh) at CANA Ghent pom tho tds) eS

Allowed his head to drop on his breast, as if saddened
Dy. the vamity of humaneambition; : ~. 4.” vie Z0

his was his” passing. © Vhis=—5 0 ws is ote ws 988

ROMANCE

PART FIRST
THE QUARRY AND THE BEACH
CHAPTER I

O yesterday and to to-day I say my polite “ vaya usted con

Dios.” What are these days to me? But that far-off

day of my romance, when from between the blue and
white bales in Don Ramon’s darkened storeroom, at Kingston, I
saw the door open before the figure of an old man with the tired,
long, white face, that day I am not likely to forget. I remember
the chilly smell of the typical West Indian store, the indescribable
smell of damp gloom, of locos, of pimento, of olive oil, of new
sugar, of new rum; the glassy double sheen of Ramon’s great
spectacles, the piercing eyes in the mahogany face, while the tap,
tap, tap of a cane on the flags went on behind the inner door;
the click of the latch; the stream of light. The door, petulantly
thrust inwards, struck against some barrels. I remember the
rattling of the bolts on that door, and the tall figure that appeared
there, snuffbox in hand. In that land of white clothes, that pre-
cise, ancient, Castilian in black was something to remember. The
black cane that had made the tap, tap, tap dangled by a silken
cord from the hand whose delicate blue-veined, wrinkled wrist
ran back into a foam of lawn ruffles. The other hand paused in
the act of conveying a pinch of snuff to the nostrils of the hooked
nose that had, on the skin stretched tight over the bridge, the
polish of old ivory; the elbow pressing the black cocked hat against
the side; the legs, one bent, the other bowing a little back—this
was the attitude of Seraphina’s father.

Having imperiously thrust the door of the inner room open, he
remained immovable, with no intention of entering, and called in
a harsh, aged voice: “ Sefior Ramon! Sefior Ramon!” and then
twice: “ Seraphina—Seraphina!” turning his head back.

4 ROMANCE

Then for the first time I saw Seraphina, looking over her
father’s shoulder. I remember her face of that day; her eyes were
gray—the gray of black, not of blue. For a moment they looked me
straight in the face, reflectively, unconcerned, and then traveled to
the spectacles of old Ramon.

This glance—remember I was young on that day—had been
enough to set me wondering what they were thinking of me; what
they could have seen of me.

“But there he is—your Sefior Ramon,” she said to her father,
as if she were chiding him for a petulance in calling; “ your
sight is not very good, my poor little father—there he is, your
Ramon.”

The warm reflection of the light behind her, gilding the curve
of her face from ear to chin, lost itself in the shadows of black lace
falling from dark hair that was not quite black. She spoke as if
the words clung to her lips; as if she had to put them forth deli-
cately for fear of damaging the frail things. She raised her long
hand to a white flower that clung above her ear like the pen of a
clerk, and disappeared. Ramon hurried with a stiffness of immense
respect towards the ancient grandee. The door swung to.

I remained alone. ‘The blue bales and the white, and the great
red oil jars loomed in the dim light filtering through the jalousies
out of the blinding sunlight of Jamaica. A moment after, the
door opened once more and a young man came out to me; tall,
slim, with very bright, very large black eyes aglow in an absolute
pallor of face. That was Carlos Riego.

Well, that is my yesterday of romance, for the many things that
have passed between those times and now have become dim or have
gone out of my mind. And my day before yesterday was the day
on which I, at twenty-two, stood looking at myself in the tall glass,
the day on which I left my home in Kent and went, as chance
willed it, out to sea with Carlos Riego.

That day my cousin Rooksby had become engaged to my sister
Veronica, and I had a fit of jealous misery. I was rawboned,
with fair hair, I had a good skin, tanned by the weather, good
teeth, and brown eyes. I had not had a very happy life, and I had
lived shut in on myself, thinking of the wide world beyond my

PART FIRST 5

reach, that seemed to hold out infinite possibilities of romance, of
adventure, of love, perhaps, and stores of gold. In the family my
mother counted; my father did not. She was the daughter of a
Scottish earl who had ruined himself again and again. He had
been an inventor, a projector, and my mother had been a poor
beauty, brought up on the farm we still lived on—the last rag
of land that had remained to her father. Then she had married
a good man in his way; a good enough catch; moderately well off,
very amiable, easily influenced, a dilettante, and a bit of a dreamer,
too. He had taken her into the swim of the Regency, and his
purse had not held out. So my mother, asserting herself, had in-
sisted upon a return to our farm, which had been her dowry. The
alternative would have been a shabby, ignominious life at Calais,
in the shadow of Brummel and such.

My father used to sit all day by the fire, inscribing “ ideas ”’
every now and then in a pocket-book. I think he was writing
an epic poem, and I think he was happy in an ineffectual way.
He had thin red hair, untidy for want of a valet, a shining, deli-
cate, hooked nose, narrow-lidded blue eyes, and a face with the
color and texture of a white-heart cherry. He used to spend his
days in a hooded chair. My mother managed everything, leading
an out-of-door life which gave her face the color of a wrinkled
pippin. It was the face of a Roman mother, tight-lipped, brown-
eyed, and fierce. You may understand the kind of woman she was
from the kind of hands she employed on the farm. “They were
smugglers and night-malefactors to a man—and she liked that.
The decent, slow-witted, gently devious type of rustic could not
live under her. The neighbors round declared that the Lady
Mary Kemp’s farm was a hotbed of disorder. I expect it was, too;
three of our men were hung up at Canterbury on one day—for
horse-stealing and arson. .. . Anyhow, that was my mother.
As for me, I was under her, and, since I had my aspirations, I had
a rather bitter childhood. And I had others to contrast myself
with. First there was Rooksby: a pleasant, well-spoken, amiable
young squire of the immediate neighborhood ; young Sir Ralph, a
man popular with all sorts, and in love with my sister Veronica
from early days. Veronica was very beautiful, and very gentle,
and very kind; tall, slim, with sloping white shoulders and long

6 | ROMANCE

white arms, hair the color of amber, and startled blue eyes—a good
mate for Rooksby. Rooksby had foreign relations, too. The uncle
from whom he inherited the Priory had married a Riego, a Cas-
tilian, during the Peninsular war. He had been a prisoner at the
time—he had died in Spain, I think. When Ralph made the grand
tour, he had made the acquaintance of his Spanish relations; he
used to talk about them, the Riegos, and Veronica used to talk of
what he said of them until they came to stand for Romance, the
romance of the outer world, to me. One day, a little before Ralph
and Veronica became engaged, these Spaniards descended out of
the blue. It was Romance suddenly dangled right before my eyes.
It was Romance; you have no idea what it meant to me to talk to
Carlos Riego. .

Rooksby was kind enough. He had me over to the Priory,
where I made the acquaintance of the two maiden ladies, his
second cousins, who kept house for him. Yes, Ralph was kind;
but I rather hated him for it, and was a little glad when he, too,
had to suffer some of the pangs of jealousy—jealousy of Carlos
Riego.

Carlos was dark, and of a grace to set Ralph as much in the
shade as Ralph himself set me; and Carlos had seen a deal more
of the world than Ralph. He had a foreign sense of humor that
made him forever ready to sacrifice his personal dignity. It made
Veronica laugh, and even drew a grim smile from my mother; but
it gave Ralph bad moments. How he came into these parts was a
little of a mystery. When Ralph was displeased with this Spanish
connection he used to swear that Carlos had cut a throat or taken
a purse. At other times he used to say that it was a political
matter. In fine, Carlos had the hospitality of the Priory, and the
title of Count—when he chose to use it. He brought with him a
short, pursy, bearded companion, half friend, half servant, who said
he had served in Napoleon’s Spanish contingent, and had a way
of striking his breast with a wooden hand (his arm had suffered
in a cavalry charge), and exclaiming, “I, Tomas Castro! . . .”
He was an Andalusian.

For myself, the first shock of his strangeness overcome, I adored
Carlos, and Veronica liked him, and laughed at him, till one day
he said good-by and rode off along the London road, followed by

PART FIRST 5

his Tomas Castro. I had an intense longing to go with him out
into the great world that brooded all round our foot-hills.

You are to remember that I knew nothing whatever of that
great world. I had never been further away from our farm than
just to Canterbury school, to Hythe market, to Romney market.
Our farm nestled down under the steep, brown downs, just beside
the Roman road to Canterbury; Stone Street—the Street—we
called it. Ralph’s land was just on the other side of the Street,
and the shepherds on the downs used to see of nights a dead-and-
gone Rooksby, Sir Peter that was, ride upon it past the quarry
with his head under his arm. I don’t think I believed in him, but
I believed in the smugglers who shared the highway with that
horrible ghost. It is impossible for anyone nowadays to conceive
the effect these smugglers had upon life thereabouts and then.
‘They were the power to which everything else deferred. “They
used to overrun the country in great bands, and brooked no inter-
ference with their business. Not long before they had defeated
regular troops in a pitched battle on the marsh, and on the very
day I went away I remember we couldn’t do our carting because
the smugglers had given us notice they would need our horses in
the evening. ‘They were a power in the land where there was
violence enough without them, God knows! Our position on that
Street put us in the midst of it all. At dusk we shut our doors,
pulled down our blinds, sat round the fire, and knew pretty well |
what was going on outside. ‘There would be long whistles in the
dark, and when we found men lurking in our barns we feigned
not to see them—it was safer so. [he smugglers—the Free
Traders, they called themselves—were as well organized for
_helping malefactors out of the country as for running goods in; so
it came about that we used to have coiners and forgers, murderers
and French spies—all sorts of malefactors—hiding in our straw
throughout the day, waiting for the whistle to blow from the
Street at dusk. I, born with my century, was familiar with these
things; but my mother forbade my meddling with them. I expect
she knew enough herself—all the resident gentry did. But Ralph
—though he was to some extent of the new school, and used to
boast that, if applied to, he would grant a warrant against any
Free Trader—never did, as a matter of fact, or not for many years,

8 ROMANCE

Carlos, then, Rooksby’s Spanish kinsman, had come and gone,
and I envied him his going, with his air of mystery, to some far-off
lawless adventures—perhaps over there in Spain, where there were
war and rebellion. Shortly afterwards Rooksby proposed for the
hand of Veronica and was accepted—by my mother. Veronica
went about looking happy. ‘That upset me, too. It seemed unjust
that she would go out into the great world—to Bath, to Brighton,
should see the Prince Regent and the great fights on Hounslow
Heath—whilst I was to remain forever a farmer’s boy. ‘That
afternoon I was upstairs, looking at the reflection of myself in the
tall glass, wondering miserably why I seemed to be such an oaf.

The voice of Rooksby hailed me suddenly from downstairs.
“Hey, John—John Kemp; come down, I say!”

I started away from the glass as if I had been taken in an act
of folly. Rooksby was flicking his leg with his switch in the door-
way, at the bottom of the narrow flight of stairs.

He wanted to talk to me, he said, and I followed him out
through the yard on to the soft road that climbs the hill to west-
ward. ‘The evening was falling slowly and mournfully; it was
dark already in the folds of the somber downs.

We passed the corner of the orchard.

“I know what you’ve got to tell me,” I said. ‘‘ You’re going
to marry Veronica. Well, you’ve no need of my blessing. Some
people have all the luck. HereamI . . . look at me!”

Ralph walked with his head bent down.

“Confound it,” I said, “I shall run away to sea! I tell you,
I’m rotting, rotting! There! I say, Ralph, give me Carlos’
direction. . . .” I caught hold of his arm. ‘I'll go after him.
He’d show me a little life. He said he would.”

Ralph remained lost in a kind of gloomy abstraction, while I
went on worrying him for Carlos’ address.

“Carlos is the only soul I know outside five miles from here.
Besides, he’s friends in the Indies. ‘That’s where I want to go,
and he could give me a cast. You remember what Tomas Castro
SAGE oa ant

Rooksby came to a sudden halt, and began furiously to switch
his corded legs.

“Curse Carlos, and his Castro, too. They’ll have me in jail

PARDFIRST 9

betwixt them. They’ re both in my red barn, if you want their
direction. «. <

He hurried on suddenly up the hill, leaving me gazing upwards
at him. When I caught him up he was swearing—as one did in
those days—and stamping his foot in the middle of the road.

“T tell you,” he said violently, ‘‘ it’s the most accursed business!
That Castro, with his Cuba, is nothing but a blasted buccaneer
. . . and Carlos is no better. They go to Liverpool for a pas-
sage to Jamaica, and see what comes of it!”

It seems that on Liverpool docks, in the owl-light, they fell in
with an elderly hunks just returned from West Indies, who asks
the time at the door of a shipping agent. Castro pulls out a
watch, and the old fellow jumps on it, vows it’s his own, taken
from him years before by some picaroons on his outward voyage.
Out from the agent’s comes another, and swears that Castro is one
of the self-same crew. He himself purported to be the master of
the very ship. Afterwards—in the solitary dusk among the ropes
and bales—there had evidently been some play with knives, and it
ended with a flight to London, and then down to Rooksby’s red
barn, with the runners in full cry after them.

“Think of it,” Rooksby said, ‘and me a justice, and .
oh, it drives me wild, this hole-and-corner work! ‘There’s a filthy
muddle with the Free Traders—a whistle to blow after dark at
the quarry. To-night of all nights, and mea justice . . . and
as good as a married man!”

I looked at him wonderingly in the dusk; his high coat collar
almost hid his face, and his hat was pressed down over his eyes.
The thing seemed incredible to me. Here was an adventure,
and I was shocked to see that Rooksby was in a pitiable state
about it.

“But, Ralph,” I said, “I would help Carlos.”

“Oh, you,” he said fretfully. ‘“ You want to run your head into
a noose; that’s what it comes to. Why, I may have to flee the
country. ‘There’s the red-breasts poking their noses into every
cottage on the Ashford road.” He strode on again. A wisp of
mist came stealing down the hill. “ I can’t give my cousin up. He
could be smuggled out, right enough. But then I should have to
get across salt water, too, for at least a year. Why

10 ROMANCE

He seemed ready to tear his hair, and then I put in my say. He
needed a little persuasion, though, in spite of Veronica.

I should have to meet Carlos Riego and Castro in a little fir-
wood above the quarry, in half an hour’s time. All I had to do
was to whistle three bars of Lillibullero,” as a signal. A con-
nection had been already arranged with the Free Traders on the
road beside the quarry, and they were coming down that night, as
we knew well enough, both of us. They were coming in force
from Canterbury way down to the Marsh. It had cost Ralph a
pretty penny; but, once in the hands of the smugglers, his cousin
and Castro would be safe enough from the runners; it would have
needed a troop of horse to take them. The difficulty was that of
late the smugglers themselves had become demoralized. ‘There
were ugly rumors of it; and there was a danger that Castro and
Carlos, if not looked after, might end their days in some marsh-
dyke. It was desirable that someone well known in our parts
should see them to the seashore. A boat, there, was to take them
out into the bay, where an outward-bound West Indiaman would
pick them up. But for Ralph’s fear for his neck, which had in-
creased in value since its devotion to Veronica, he would have
squired his cousin. As it was, he fluttered round the idea of letting
me take his place. Finally he settled it; and I embarked on a long
adventure.

CHAPTER II

ETWEEN moonrise and sunset I was stumbling through
B the bracken of the little copse that was like a tuft of hair

on the brow of the great white quarry. It was quite dark,
in among the trees. I made the circuit of the copse, whistling
softly my three bars of “ Lillibullero.” Then I plunged into it.
The bracken underfoot rustled and rustled. I came to a halt. A
little bar of light lay on the horizon in front of me, almost color-
less. It was crossed again and again by the small fir-trunks that
were little more than wands. A woodpigeon rose with a sudden
crash of sound, flapping away against the branches. My pulse
was dancing with delight—my heart, too. It was like a game of
hide-and-seek, and yet it was life at last. Everything grew silent
again, and I began to think I had missed my time. Down below
in the plain, a great way off, a dog was barking continuously. I
moved forward a few paces and whistled. ‘The glow of adventure
began to die away. ‘There was nothing at all—a little mystery of
light on the tree-trunks.

I moved forward again, getting back towards the road. Against
the glimmer of dead light I thought I caught the outlines of a
man’s hat down among the tossing lines of the bracken. I whis-
pered loudly:

“Carlos! Carlos!”

There was a moment of hoarse whispering; a sudden gruff
sound. A shaft of blazing yellow light darted from the level of the
ground into my dazed eyes. A man sprang at me and thrust some-
thing cold and knobby into my neckcloth. The light continued to
blaze into my eyes; it moved upwards and shone on a red waistcoat
dashed with gilt buttons. I was being arrested. . . . “In the
King’s name. .’ Tt was a most sudden catastrophe. A hand
was clutching my windpipe.

“Don’t you so much as squeak, Mr. Castro,” a voice whispered
in my ear.

tr

12 ROMANCE

The lanthorn light suddenly died out, and I heard whispers.
“Get him out on to the road. . . . I'll tackle the other
. Darbies. . . . Mind his knife.” -

I was like a confounded rabbit in their hands. One of them
had his fist on my collar and jerked me out upon the hard road.
We rolled down the embankment, but he was on the top. It
seemed an abominable episode, a piece of bad faith on the part of
‘fate. I ought to have been exempt from these sordid haps, but
the man’s hot leathery hand on my throat was like a foretaste of the
other collar. And I was horribly afraid—horribly—of the sort of
mysterious potency of the laws that these men represented, and I
could think of nothing to do.

We stood in a little slanting cutting in the shadow. A watery
light before the moon’s rising slanted downwards from the gee
along the opposite bank. We stood in utter silence.

“Tf you stir a hair,” my captor said coolly, “Tl squeeze the
blood out of your throat, like a rotten orange.’

He had the calmness of one dealing with an every-day incident;
yet the incident was—it should have been—tremendous. We
stood waiting silently for an eternity, as one waits for a hare to
break covert before the beaters. From down the long hill came
a small sound of horses’ hoofs—a sound like the beating of the
heart, intermittent—a muffled thud on turf, and a faint clink of
iron. It seemed to die away unheard by the runner beside me.
Presently there was a crackling of the short pine branches, a rustle,
and a hoarse whisper said from above:

“ Other’s cleared, Thoms. Got that one safe?”

** All serene.”

The man from above dropped down into the road, a clumsy,
cloaked figure. He turned his lantern upon me, in a painful ©
yellow glare.

“What! ’Tis the young ’un,” he grunted, after a moment.
“Read the warrant, Thoms.”

My captor began to fumble in his pocket, pulled out a paper,
and bent down into the light. Suddenly he paused and looked up
at me.

“This aint
Jack Spaniard.”

Mr. Lillywhite. 1 donte! believe ehic area

PART FIRST 13

The clinks of bits and stirrup-irons came down in a waft again.

“That be hanged for a tale, Thoms,” the man with the lan-
thorn said sharply. “If this here aint Riego—or the other—
Be Ns eee

I began to come out of my stupor.

“My name’s John Kemp,” I said.

The other grunted. “ Hurry up, Thoms.”

“But, Mr. Lillywhite,” Thoms reasoned, “ he don’t speak like
a Dago. Split me if he do! And we aint in a friendly country
either, you know that. We can’t afford to rile the gentry! ”

I plucked up courage.

“You'll get your heads broke,” I said, “if you wait much
longer. Hark to that!”

The approaching horses had turned off the turf on to the hard
road ; the steps of first one and then another sounded out down the
silent hill. I knew it was the Free Traders from that; for except
between banks they kept to the soft roadsides as if it were an article
of faith. The noise of hoofs became that of an army.

The runners began to consult. The shadow called Thoms was
for bolting across country; but Lillywhite was not built for speed.
Besides he did not know the lie of the land, and believed the Free
‘Traders were mere bogeys.

“They'll never touch us,” Lillywhite grumbled. “ We’ve a
warrant . . . King’sname. . -’ He was flashing his lan-
thorn aimlessly up the hill.

“ Besides,” he began again, “ we’ve got this gallus bird. If he’s
not a Spaniard, he knows all about them. I heard him. Kemp he
may be, but he spoke Spanish up there . . . and we've got some-
thing for our trouble. He’ll swing, I'll lay you a ze

From far above us came a shout, then a confused noise of voices.
The moon began to get up; above the cutting the clouds had a
fringe of sudden silver. A horseman, cloaked and muffled to the
ears, trotted warily towards us.

“ What’s up?” he hailed from a matter of ten yards. ‘ What
are you showing that glim for? Anything wrong below?”

The runners kept silence; we heard the click of a pistol lock.

“In the king’s name,” Lillywhite shouted, “ get off that nag
and lend a hand! We've a prisoner.”

14 ROMANCE

The horseman gave an incredulous whistle, and then began
to shout, his voice winding mournfully uphill, ‘“ Hallo! Hal-
lo—o—o.” An echo stole back, “ Hallo! Hallo—o—o”’; then
a number of voices. The horse stood, drooping its head, and the
man turned in his saddle. ‘“‘ Runners,” he shouted, ‘‘ Bow Street
runners! Come along, come along, boys! We'll roast ’em.
-.» +» Runners! Runners!C;

The sound of heavy horses at a jolting trot came to our ears.

“We're in for it,” Lillywhite grunted. “ D n this county
of Kent.”

Thoms never loosed his hold of my collar. At the steep of the
hill the men and horses came into sight against the white sky, a
confused crowd of ominous things.

“Turn that lanthorn off’n me,” the horseman said. ‘‘ Don’t you
see you frighten my horse? Now, boys, get round them. .. .”

The great horses formed an irregular half-circle round us; men
descended clumsily, like sacks of corn. ‘The lanthorn was seized
and flashed upon us; there was a confused hubbub. I caught my
own name.

“Yes, ’m Kemp . . . John Kemp,’ I called. “I’m true
blue.”

“Blue be hanged!” a voice shouted back. “ What be you a-doing
with runners?”

‘The riot went on—forty or fifty voices. The runners were
seized; several hands caught at me. It was impossible to make
myself heard; a fist struck me on the cheek.

“Gibbet. ’em,” somebody shrieked; “they hung my nephew!
Gibbet ’em all the three. Young Kemp’s mother’s a bad ’un. An
informer he is. Up with ’em!”

I was pulled down on my knees, then thrust forward, and then
left to myself while they rushed to bonnet Lillywhite. I stumbled
against a great, quiet farm horse.

A continuous scuffling went on; an imperious voice cried, ‘‘ Hold
your tongues, you fools! Hold your tongues! . . .” Someone
else called: “ Hear to Jack Rangsley. Hear to him!”

There was a silence. I saw a hand light a torch at the lanthorn,
and the crowd of faces, the muddle of limbs, the horses’ heads, and
the quiet trees above, flickered into sight.

PART FIRST 15

“Don’t let them hang me, Jack Rangsley,” I sobbed. ‘‘ You
know I’m no spy. Don’t let em hang me, Jack.”

He rode his horse up to me, and caught me by the collar.

“Hold your tongue,” he said roughly. He began to make a
set speech, anathematizing runners. He moved to tie our feet,
and hang us by our finger-nails over the quarry edge.

A hubbub of assent and dissent went up; then the crowd be-
came unanimous. Rangsley slipped from his horse.

“ Blindfold ’em, lads,” he cried, and turned me sharply round.

“ Don’t struggle,” he whispered in my ear; his silk handkerchief
came cool across my eyelids. I felt hands fumbling with a knot at
the back of my head. “ You're all right,” he said again. The
hubbub of voices ceased suddenly. ‘‘ Now, lads, bring ’em along.”

A voice I knew said their watchword, ‘“‘ Snuff and enough,”’
loudly, and then, ‘“‘ What’s agate? ”’

Someone else answered, “ It’s Rooksby, it’s Sir Ralph.”

The voice interrupted sharply, ‘‘ No names, now. J don’t want
hanging.” ‘The hand left my arm; there was a pause in the mo-
tion of the procession. I caught a moment’s sound of whispering.
Then a new voice cried, “ Strip the runners to the shirt. Strip
’em. That’s it.” I heard some groans and a cry, ‘“‘ You won’t
murder us.” ‘Then a nasal drawl, “ We will sure—/y.”’ Someone
else, Rangsley, I think, called, “Bring ’em along—this way
now.”

After a period of turmoil we seemed to come out of the crowd
upon a very rough, descending path; Rangsley had called out,
““ Now, then, the rest of you be off; we’ve got enough here”; and
the hoofs of heavy horses sounded again. Then we came to a halt,
and Rangsley called sharply from close to me:

“ Now, you runners—and you, John Kemp—here you be on the
brink of eternity, above the old quarry. There’s a sheer drop of a
hundred feet. We'll tie your legs and hang you by your fingers.
If you hang long enough, you'll have time to say your prayers.
Look alive, lads!”

The voice of one of the runners began to shout, “ You'll swing
for this—you ts

As for me I was in a dream. “‘ Jack,” I said, “ Jack, you
won't 4d

16 : ROMANCE

“Oh, that’s all right,” the voice said in a whisper. “ Mum,
now! It’s all right.”

It withdrew itself a little from my ear and called, “ Now then,
ready with them. When I say three. . . .”

I heard groans and curses, and began to shout for help. My
voice came back in an echo, despairingly. Suddenly I was dragged
backward, and the bandage pulled from my eyes.

“Come along,” Rangsley said, leading me gently enough to the
road, which was five steps behind. “It’s all a joke,” he snarled.
“A pretty bad one for those catchpolls. Hear ’em groan. The
drop’s not two feet.”

We made a few paces down the road; the pitiful voices of the
runners crying for help came plainly to my ears.

“ You—they—aren’t murdering them?” I asked.

“No, no,” he answered. ‘‘ Can’t afford to. Wish we could;
but they’d make it too hot for us.”

We began to descend the hill. From the quarry a voice
shrieked :

“ Help—help—for the love of God—I can’t . . .”

There was a grunt and the sound of a fall; then a precisely
similar sequence of sounds.

“That ’ll teach ’em,” Rangsley said ferociously. ‘‘ Come along
—they’ve only rolled down a bank. They weren’t over the quarry.
It’s all right, I swear it is.”

And, as a matter of fact, that was the smugglers’ ferocious idea
of humor. They would hang any undesirable man, like these
runners, whom it would make too great a stir to murder outright,
over the edge of a low bank, and swear to him that he was clawing
the brink of Shakespeare’s Cliff or any other hundred-foot drop.
The wretched creatures suffered all the tortures of death before
they let go, and, as a rule, they never returned to our parts.

CHAPTER III

HE spirit of the age has changed; everything has changed

so utterly that one can hardly believe in the existence of

one’s earlier self. But I can still remember how, at that
moment, I made the acquaintance of my heart—a thing that
bounded and leapt within my chest, a little sickeningly. The other
details I forget.

Jack Rangsley was a tall, big-boned, thin man, with something
sinister in the lines of his horseman’s cloak, and something reckless
in the way he set his spurred heel on the ground. He was the son
of an old Marsh squire. Old Rangsley had been head of the last
of the Owlers—the aristocracy of export smugglers—and Jack
had sunk a little in becoming the head of the Old Bourne Tap
importers. But he was hard enough, tyrannical enough, and had
nerve enough to keep Free-trading alive in our parts until long
after it had become an anachronism. He ended his days on the
gallows, of course, but that was long afterwards.

“T’d give a dollar to know what’s going on in those runners’
heads,” Rangsley said, pointing back with his crop. He laughed
gayly. The great white face of the quarry rose up pale in the
moonlight; the dusky red fires of the limekilns glowed at the
base, sending up a blood-red dust of sullen smoke. ‘I'll swear
they think they’ve dropped straight into hell.

“You'll have to cut the country, John,” he added suddenly,
“they'll have got your name uncommon pat. I did my best for
you.” He had had me tied up like that before the runners’ eyes in
order to take their suspicions off me. He had made a pretense to
murder me with the same idea. But he didn’t believe they were
taken in. ‘‘ There’ll be warrants out before morning, if they aint
too shaken. But what were you doing in the business? ‘The two
Spaniards were lying in the fern looking on when you come
blundering your clumsy nose in. If it hadn’t been for Rooksby
you might have Hullo, there!” he broke off.

17

18 ROMANCE

An answer came from the black shadow of a clump of roadside
elms. I made out the forms of three or four horses standing with
their heads together.

‘““Come along,” Rangsley said; “up with you. We'll talk
as we go.”

Someone helped me into a saddle; my legs trembled in the stir-
rups as if I had ridden a thousand miles on end already. I imagine
I must have fallen into a stupor; for I have only a vague impres-
sion of somebody’s exculpating himself to me. As a matter of fact,
Ralph, after having egged me on, in the intention of staying at
home, had had qualms of conscience, and had come to the quarry.
It was he who had cried the watchword, “ Snuff and enough,”
and who had held the whispered consultation. Carlos and Castro
had waited in their hiding-place, having been spectators of the
arrival of the runners and of my capture. I gathered this long
afterwards. At that moment I was conscious only of the motion
of the horse’ beneath me, of intense weariness, and of the voice of
Ralph, who was lamenting his own cowardice.

“Tf it had come at any other time!” he kept on repeating.
“ But now, with Veronica to think of! You take me, Johnny,
don’t you?”

My companions rode silently. After we had passed the houses
of a little village a heavy mist fell upon us, white, damp, and
clogging. Ralph reined his horse beside mine.

“Tm sorry,” he began again, “I’m miserably sorry I got you
into this scrape. I swear I wouldn’t have had it happen, not for
a thousand pounds—not for ten.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said cheerfully.

“Ah, but,” Rooksby said, “ you’ll have to leave the country for
atime. Until I can arrange. I will. You can trust me.”

“Oh, he’ll have to leave the country, for sure,” Rangsley said
jovially, “if he wants to live it down. ‘There’s five-and-forty
warrants out against me—but they dursent serve ’em. But he’s
not me.”

“Tt’s a miserable business,” Ralph said. He had an air of the
profoundest dejection. In the misty light he looked like a man
mortally wounded, riding from a battle-field.

“Let him come with us,” the musical voice of Carlos came

PART FIRST 19

through the mist in front of us. ‘He shall see the world a
little.”

“For God’s sake hold your tongue!” Ralph answered him.
“There s mischief enough. He shall go to France.”

“Oh, let the young blade rip about the world for a year or two,
squire,’ Rangsley’s voice said from behind us.

In the end Ralph let me go with Carlos—actually across the
sea, and to the West Indies. I begged and implored him; it
seemed that now there was a chance for me to find my world of
romance. And Ralph, who, though one of the most law-respecting
of men, was not for the moment one of the most valorous, was wild
to wash his hands of the whole business. He did his best for me;
he borrowed a goodly number of guineas from Rangsley, who
traveled with a bag of them at his saddle-bow, ready to pay his
men their seven shillings a head for the run.

Ralph remembered, too—or I remembered for him—that he had
estates and an agent in Jamaica, and he turned into the big inn at
the junction of the London road to write a letter to his agent
bidding him house me and employ me as an improver. For fear
of compromising him we waited in the shadow of trees a furlong
or two down the road. He came at a trot, gave me the letter,
drew me aside, and began upbraiding himself again. The others
rode onwards.

“Oh, it’s all right,” I said. “It’s fine—it’s fine. I’d have given
fifty guineas for this chance this morning—and, Ralph, I say, you
may tell Veronica why I’m going, but keep a shut mouth to my
mother. Let her think I’ve run away—eh? Don’t spoil your
chance.”

He was in such a state of repentance and flutter that he could
not let me take a decent farewell. ‘The sound of the others’ horses
had long died away down the hill when he began to tell me what
he ought to have done.

“T knew it at once after I’d let you go. I ought to have kept
you out of it. You came near being murdered. And to think of it
—you, her brother—to be ef

“Oh, it’s all right,” I said gayly, “it’s all right. You've to
stand by Veronica. I’ve no one to my back. Good-night, good-
by.”

20 ROMANCE

I pulled my horse’s head round and galloped down the hill.
The main body had halted before setting out over the shingle to
the shore. Rangsley was waiting to conduct us into the town,
where we should find a man to take us three fugitives out to the
expected ship. We rode clattering aggressively through the silence
of the long, narrow main street. Every now and then Carlos
Riego coughed lamentably, but Tomas Castro rode in gloomy
silence. There was a light here and there in a window, but not
a soul stirring abroad. On the blind of an inn the shadow of a
bearded man held the shadow of a rummer to its mouth.

“That ’ll be my uncle,” Rangsley said. “‘ He’ll be the man to
do your errand.” He called to one of the men behind. “ Here,
Joe Pilcher, do you go into the White Hart and drag my Uncle
Tom out. Bring un up to me—to the nest.”

Three doors further on we came to a halt, and got down from
our horses.

Rangsley knocked on a shutter-panel, two hard knocks with the
crop and three with the naked fist. ‘Then a lock clicked, heavy
bars rumbled, and a chain rattled. Rangsley pushed me through
the doorway. A side door opened, and I saw into a lighted room
filled with wreaths of smoke. A paunchy man in a bob wig, with
a blue coat and Windsor buttons, holding a churchwarden pipe in
his right hand and a pewter quart in his left, came towards us.

“Hullo, captain,” he said, “‘ you’ll be too late with the lights,
won't you?” He had a deprecatory air.

“Your watch is fast, Mr. Mayor,” Rangsley answered surlily;
“the tide won’t serve for half an hour yet.”

“Cht, cht,” the other wheezed. “No offense. We respect
you. But still, when one has a stake, one likes to know.”

“My stake’s all I have, and my neck,” Rangsley said impa-
tiently; “ what’s yours? A matter of fifty pun ten? . . . Why
don’t you make them bring they lanthorns? ” '

A couple of dark lanthorns were passed to Rangsley, who half-
uncovered one, and lit the way up steep wooden stairs. We
climbed up to a tiny cock-loft, of which the side towards the sea
was all glazed.

“ Now you sit there, on the floor,” Rangsley commanded; “ can’t
leave you below; the runners will be coming to the mayor for new

PART FIRST 21

warrants to-morrow, and he’d not like to have spent the night in
your company.”

He threw a casement open. The moon was hidden from us by
clouds, but, a long way off, over the distant sea, there was an irreg-
ular patch of silver light, against which the chimneys of the
opposite houses were silhouetted. The church clock began
mufHledly to chime the quarters behind us; then the hour struck—
ten strokes.

Rangsley set one of his lanthorns on the window and twisted the
top. He sent beams of yellow light shooting out to seawards.
His hands quivered, and he was mumbling to himself under the
influence of ungovernable excitement. . His stakes were very large,
and all depended on the flicker of those lanthorns out towards the
men on the luggers that were hidden in the black expanse of the
sea. Then he waited, and against the light of the window I could
see him mopping his forehead with the sleeve of his coat; my heart
began to beat softly and insistently—out of sympathy.

Suddenly, from the deep shadow of the cloud above the sea, a
yellow light flashed silently out—very small, very distant, very
short-lived. Rangsley heaved a deep sigh and slapped me heavily
on the shoulder.

“ All serene, my buck,” he said; “ now let’s see after you. I’ve
half an hour. What’s the ship?”

I was at a loss, but Carlos said out of the darkness, ‘‘ The ship
the Thames. My friend Sefior Ortiz, of the Minories, said you
would know.”

“ Oh, I know, I know,” Rangsley said softly; and, indeed, he
did know all that was to be known about smuggling out of the
‘southern counties of people who could no longer inhabit them.
The trade was a survival of the days of Jacobite plots. ‘‘ And
it’s a hanging job, too? But it’s no affair of mine.” He stopped
and reflected for an instant.

I could feel Carlos’ eyes upon us, looking out of the thick dark-
ness. A slight rustling came from the corner that hid Castro.

“She passes down channel to-night, then?” Rangsley said.
“ With this wind you’ll want to be well out in the Bay at a quarter
after eleven.”

An abnormal scuffing, intermingled with snatches of jovial

22 ROMANCE

remonstrance, made itself heard from the bottom of the ladder.
A voice called up through the hatch, “‘ Here’s your uncle, Squahre
Jack,” and a husky murmur corroborated.

“ Be you drunk again, you old sinner?” Rangsley asked. “ Lis-
ten tome. . . . Here’s three men to be set aboard the Thames at
a quarter after eleven.”

A grunt came in reply.

Rangsley repeated slowly.

The grunt answered again.

“ Here’s three men to be set aboard the Thames at a quarter
after eleven . . .”’ Rangsley said again.

“Here’s . . . a-cop . . . three men to be set aboard Thames
at quarter after eleven,” a voice hiccoughed back to us.

“Well, see you do it,” Rangsley said. ‘“ He’s as drunk as a
king,” he commented to us; “ but when you've said a thing three
times, he remembers—hark to him.”

The drunken voice from below kept up a constant babble of,
“Three men to be set aboard Thames . . . three men to be
Sete A

“ He'll not stop saying that till he has you safe aboard,” Rangs-
ley said. He showed a glimmer of light down the ladder—Carlos
and Castro descended. I caught sight below me of the silver head
and the deep red ears of the drunken uncle of Rangsley. He had
been one of the most redoubtable of the family, a man of immense
strength and cunning, but a confirmed habit of consuming a pint
and a half of gin a night had made him disinclined for the more
arduous tasks of the trade. He limited his energies to working
the underground passage, to the success of which his fox-like
cunning, and intimate knowledge of the passing shipping, were
indispensable. I was preparing to follow the others down the
ladder when Rangsley touched my arm.

“T don’t like your company,” he said close behind my ear. “I
know who they are. There were bills out for them this morning,
I’d blow them, and take the reward, but for you and Squahre
Rooksby. They’re handy with their knives, too, I fancy. You
mind me, and look to yourself with them. ‘There’s something
unnatural.”

His words had a certain effect upon me, and his manner perhaps

PART FIRST 23

more. A thing that was “ unnatural ” to Jack Rangsley—the man
of darkness, who lived forever as if in the shadow of the gallows—
was a thing to be avoided. He was for me nearly as romantic a
figure as Carlos himself, but for his forbidding darkness, and he
was a person of immense power. The silent flittings of lights that
I had just seen, the answering signals from the luggers far out to
sea, the enforced sleep of the towns and countryside whilst his
plans were working out at night, had impressed me with a sense
of awe. And his words sank into my spirit, and made me afraid
for my future.

We followed the others downwards into a ground-floor room
that was fitted up as a barber’s shop. A rushlight was burning on
a table. Rangsley took hold of a piece of wainscoting, part of the
frame of a panel; he pulled it towards him, and, at the same mo-
ment, a glazed show-case full of razors and brushes swung noise-
lessly forward with an effect of the supernatural. A small open-
ing, just big enough to take a man’s body, revealed itself. We
passed through it and up a sort of tunnel. The door at the other
end, which was formed of panels, had a manger and straw crib
attached to it on the outside, and let us into a horse’s stall. We
found ourselves in the stable of the inn.

“We don’t use this passage for ourselves,” Rangsley said.
“ Only the most looked up to need to—the justices and such like.
But gallus birds like you and your company, it’s best for us not
to be seen in company with. Follow my uncle now. Good-
night.”

We went into the yard, under the pillars of the town hall, across
the silent street, through a narrow passage, and down to the sea.
Old Rangsley reeled ahead of us swiftly, muttering, ‘‘ Three men
to be set aboard of the Thames . . . quarter past eleven. Three
men to be set aboard . . .” and in a few minutes we stood upon
the shingle beside the idle sea, that was nearly at the full.

CHAPTER IV.

T was, I suppose, what I demanded of Fate—to be gently
wafted into the position of a hero of romance, without rough
ff hands at my throat. It is what we all ask, I suppose; and we
get it sometimes in ten-minute snatches. I didn’t know where
I was going. It was enough for me to sail in and out of the
patches of shadow that fell from the moon right above our heads.
We embarked, and, as we drew further out, the land turned
to a shadow, spotted here and there with little lights. Behind us
a cock crowed. The shingle crashed at intervals beneath the feet
of a large body of men. I remembered the smugglers; but it was
as if I had remembered them only to forget them forever. Old
Rangsley, who steered with the sheet in his hand, kept up an un-
intelligible babble. Carlos and Castro talked under their breaths.
Along the gunwale there was a constant ripple and gurgle. Sud-
denly old Rangsley began to sing; his voice was hoarse and
drunken.
‘When Harol’ war inva—a—ded,
An’ fallin’, lost his crownd,
An’ Normun Willium wa—a—ded.”

The water murmured without a pause, as if it had a million
tiny facts to communicate in very little time. And then old
Rangsley hove to, to wait for the ship, and sat half asleep, lurching
over the tiller. He was a very unreliable scoundrel. ‘The boat
leaked like a sieve. ‘The wind freshened, and we three began to
ask ourselves how it was going to end. ‘There were no lights upon
the sea.

At iast, well out, a blue gleam caught our eyes; but by this time
old Rangsley was helpless, and it fell to me to manage the boat.
Carlos was of no use—he knew it, and, without saying a word,
busied himself in bailing the water out. But Castro, I was sur-
prised to notice, knew more than I did about a boat, and, maimed
as he was, made himself useful.

24

PART FIRST 25

“To me it looks as if we should drown,” Carlos said at one
point, very quietly. ‘I am sorry for you, Juan.”

“And for yourself, too,” I answered, feeling very hopeless, and
with a dogged grimness.

“Just now, my young cousin, I feel as if I should not mind
dying under the water,” he remarked with a sigh, but without
ceasing to bail for a moment.

“Ah, you are sorry to be leaving home, and your friends, and
Spain, and your fine adventures,” I answered.

The blue flare showed a very little nearer. There was nothing
to be done but talk and wait.

“No; England,” he answered in a tone full of meaning—
“things in England—people there. One person at least.”

To me his words and his smile seemed to imply a bitter irony;
but they were said very earnestly.

Castro had hauled the helpless form of old Rangsley forward.
I caught him muttering savagely:

“T could kill that old man!”

He did not want to be drowned; neither assuredly did I. But
it was not fear so much as a feeling of dreariness and disappoint-
ment that had come over me, the sudden feeling that I was going
not to adventure, but to death; that here was not romance, but an
end—a disenchanted surprise that it should so soon be all over.

We kept a grim silence. Further out in the bay, we were caught
in a heavy squall. Sitting by the tiller, I got as much out of her as
I knew how. We would go as far as we could before the run was
over. Carlos bailed unceasingly, and without a word of complaint,
sticking to his self-appointed task as if in very truth he were care-
less of life. A feeling came over me that this, indeed, was the
elevated and the romantic. Perhaps he was tired of his life; per-
haps he really regretted what he left behind him in England, or
somewhere else—some association, some woman. But he, at least,
if we went down together, would go gallantly, and without com-
plaint, at the end of a life with associations, movements, having
lived and regretted. I should disappear ingloriously on the very
threshold.

Castro, standing up unsteadily, growled, “ We may do it yet!
See, sefior! ”

26 ROMANCE

The blue gleam was much larger—it flared smokily right up
towards the sky. I made out ghastly parallelograms of a ship’s
sails high above us, and at last many faces peering unseeingly over
the rail in our direction. We all shouted together.

I may say that it was thanks to me that we reached the ship.
Our boat went down under us whilst I was tying a rope under
Carlos’ arms. He was standing up with the bailer still in his hand.
On board, the women passengers were screaming, and as I clung
desperately to the rope that was thrown me, it struck me oddly
that I had never before heard so many women’s voices at the same
time. Afterwards, when I stood on the deck, they began laughing
at old Rangsley, who held forth in a thunderous voice, punctuated.
by hiccoughs:

“ They carried I aboord—a-cop—theer lugger and sinks I in the
cold, co—old sea.”

It mortified me excessively that I should be tacked to his tail
and exhibited to a number of people, and I had a sudden conviction
of my small importance. I had expected something altogether
different—an audience sympathetically interested in my desire for
a passage to the West Indies; instead of which people laughed
while I spoke in panting jerks, and the water dripped out of my
clothes. After I had made it clear that I wanted to go with
Carlos, and could pay for my passage, I was handed down into the
steerage, where a tallow candle burnt in a thick, blue atmosphere.
I was stripped and filled with some fiery liquid, and fell asleep.
Old Rangsley was sent ashore with the pilot.

It was a new and strange life to me, opening there suddenly
enough. The Thames was one of the usual West Indiamen; but
to me even the very ropes and spars, the sea, and the unbroken
dome of the sky, had a rich strangeness. ‘Time passed lazily and
gliding. I made more fully the acquaintance of my companions,
but seemed to know them no better. I lived with Carlos in the
cabin—Castro in the half-deck; but we were all three pretty con-
stantly together, and they being the only Spaniards on board, we
were more or less isolated from the other passengers.

Looking at my companions at times, I had vague misgivings.
It was as if these two had fascinated me to the verge of some
danger. Sometimes Castro, looking up, uttered vague ejaculations.

PART FIRST 27

Carlos pushed his hat back and sighed. They had preoccupations,
cares, interests in which they let me have no part.

Castro struck me as absolutely ruffianly. His head was knotted
in a red, white-spotted handkerchief; his grizzled beard was
tangled; he wore a black and rusty cloak, ragged at the edges, and
his feet were often bare; at his side would lie his wooden right
hand. As a rule, the place of his forearm was taken by a long,
thin, steel blade, that he was forever sharpening.

Carlos talked with me, telling me about his former life and his
adventures. ‘The other passengers he discountenanced by a certain
coldness of manner that made me ashamed of talking to them. I
respected him so; he was so wonderful to me then. Castro I de-
tested ; but I accepted their relationship without in the least under-
standing how Carlos, with his fine grain, his high soul—I gave
him credit for a high soul—could put up with the squalid ferocity
with which I credited Castro. It seemed to hang in the air round
the grotesque raggedness of the saturnine brown man.

Carlos had made Spain too hot to hold him in those tortuous
intrigues of the Army of the Faith and Bourbon troops and Italian
legions. From what I could understand, he must have played fast
and loose in an insolent manner. And there was some woman
offended. There was a gayness and gallantry in that part of it.
He had known the very spirit of romance, and now he was sailing
gallantly out to take up his inheritance from an uncle who was
a great noble, owning the greater part of one of the Intendencias
of Cuba.

“ He is a very old man, I hear,’”’ Carlos said—“ a little doting,
and having need of me.”

There were all the elements of romance about Carlos’ story—
except the actual discomforts of the ship in which we were sailing.
_ He himself had never been in Cuba or seen his uncle; but he had,
as I have indicated, ruined himself in one way or another in Spain,
and it had come as a God-send to him when his uncle had sent
Tomas Castro to bring him to Cuba, to the town of Rio Medio.

“The town belongs to my uncle. He is very rich; a Grand
d’Espagne . . . everything; but he is now very old, and has left
Havana to die in his palace in his own town. He has an only
daughter, a Dofia Seraphina, and I suppose that if I find favor in

28 ROMANCE

his eyes I shall marry her, and inherit my uncle’s great riches; I
am the only one that is left of the family to inherit.” He waved
his hand and smiled a little. ‘“‘ Vaya; a little of that great wealth
would be welcome. If I had had a few pence more there would
have been none of this worry, and I should not have been on this
dirty ship in these rags.’ He looked down good-humoredly at his
clothes.

“ But,” I said, ‘““ how do you come to be in a scrape at all?”

He laughed a little proudly.

“Inascrape?” he said. “I... Iaminnone. It is Tomas
Castro there.” He laughed affectionately. “ He is as faithful as
he is ugly,” he said; “‘ but I fear he has been a villain, too. . . .
What do I know? Over there in my uncle’s town, there are some
villains—you know what I mean, one must not speak too loudly
on this ship. There is a man called O’Brien, who mismanages my
uncle’s affairs. What do I know? The good Tomas has been in
some villainy that is no affair of mine. He is a good friend and
a faithful dependent of my family’s. He certainly had that man’s
watch—the man we met by evil chance at Liverpool, a man who
came from Jamaica. He had bought it—of a bad man, perhaps,
I do not ask. It was Castro your police wished to take. But I,
bon Dieu, do you think I would take watches? ”

I certainly did not think he had taken a watch; but I did not
relinquish the idea that he, in a glamorous, romantic way, had been
a pirate. Rooksby had certainly hinted as much in his irritation.

He lost none of his romantic charm in my eyes. The fact that
he was sailing in uncomfortable circumstances detracted little; nor
did his clothes, which, at the worst, were better than any I had ever
had. And he wore them with an air and a grace. He had prob-
ably been in worse circumstances when campaigning with the
Army of the Faith in Spain. And there was certainly the uncle
with the romantic title and the great inheritance, and the cousin—
the Miss Seraphina, whom he would probably marry. I imagined
him an aristocratic scapegrace, a corsair—it was the Byronic period
then—sailing out to marry a sort of shimmering princess with Hair
like Veronica’s, bright golden, and a face like that of a certain
keeper’s daughter. Carlos, however, knew nothing about his
cousin; he cared little more, as far as I could tell. ‘ What can

PART FIRST 29

she be to me since I have seen your . . .?” he said once, and then
stopped, looking at me with a certain tender irony. He insisted,
though, that his aged uncle was in need of him. As for Castro—
he and his rags came out of a life of sturt and strife, and I hoped
he might die by treachery. He had undoubtedly been sent by the
uncle across the seas to find Carlos and bring him out of Europe;
there was something romantic in that mission. He was now a
dependent of the Riego family, but there were unfathomable depths
in that tubby little man’s past. That he had gone to Russia at the
tail of the Grande Armee, one could not help believing. He had
been most likely in the grand army of sutlers and camp-followers.
He could talk convincingly of the cold, and of the snows and his
escape. And from his allusions one could get glimpses of what he
had been before and afterwards—apparently everything that was
questionable in a secularly disturbed Europe; no doubt somewhat
of a bandit; a guerrilero in the sixes and sevens; with the Army of
the Faith near the French border, later on. ‘There had been room
and to spare for that sort of pike, in the muddy waters, during the
first years of the century. But the waters were clearing, and now
the good Castro had been dodging the gallows in the Antilles or in
Mexico. In his heroic moods he would swear that his arm had
been cut off at Somo Sierra; swear it with a great deal of assevera-
tion, making one see the Polish lancers charging the gunners, being
cut down, and his own sword arm falling suddenly.

Carlos, however, used to declare with affectionate cynicism that
the arm had been broken by the cudgel of a Polish peasant while
Castro was trying to filch a pig from a stable. . . . “I cut his
throat out, though,” Castro would grumble darkly; “ so, like that,
and it matters very little—it is even an improvement. See, I put
on my blade. See, I transfix you that fly there. . . . See how
astonished he was. He did never expect that.” ‘He had actually
impaled a crawling cockroach. He spent his days cooking extraor-
dinary messes, crouching for hours over a little charcoal brazier
that he lit surreptitiously in the back of his bunk, making substi-
tutes for eternal gaspachos.

All these things, if they deepened the romance of Carlos’ career,
enhanced, also, the mystery. I asked him one day, “ But why do
you go to Jamaica at all if you are bound for Cuba?”

30 ROMANCE

He looked at me, smiling a little mournfully.

“Ah, Juan mio,” he said, ‘Spain is not like your England,
unchanging and stable. The party who reign to-day do not love
me, and they are masters in Cuba as in Spain. But in his province
my uncle rules alone. ‘There I shall be safe.’’ He was condescend-
ing to roll some cigarettes for Tomas, whose wooden hand in-
commoded him, and he tossed a fragment of tobacco to the wind
with a laugh. “In Jamaica there is a merchant, a Sefior Ramon;
I have letters to him, and he shall find me a conveyance to Rio
Medio, my uncle’s town. He is an afiliado.”

He laughed again. “ It is not easy to enter that place, Juanino.”

There was certainly some mystery about that town of his
uncle’s. One night I overheard him say to Castro:

“Tell me, O my Tomas, would it be safe to take this cabal-
lero, my cousin, to Rio Medio?”

Castro paused, and then murmured gruffly:

“Sefior, unless that Irishman is consulted beforehand, or the
English lord would undertake to join with the picaroons, it is very
assuredly not safe.”

Carlos made a little exclamation of mild astonishment.

“ Pero? Is it so bad as that in my uncle’s own town?”

Tomas muttered something that I did not catch, and then:

“Tf the English caballero committed indiscretions, or quarreled
—and all these people quarrel, why, God knows—that Irish devil
could hang many persons, even myself, or take vengeance on your
worship.”

Carlos was silent as if in a reverie. At last he said:

“ But if affairs are like this, it would be well to have one more
with us. The caballero, my cousin, is very strong and of great
courage.”

Castro grunted, ‘‘ Oh, of a courage! But as the proverb says,
“If you set an Englishman by a hornets’ nest they shall not remain
long within.’ ”

After that I avoided any allusion to Cuba, because the thing, .
think as I would about it, would not grow clear. It was plain
that something illegal was going on there, or how could “ that
Irish devil,” whoever he was, have power to hang Tomas and be
revenged on Carlos? It did not affect my love for Carlos, though,

PART FIRST 31

in the weariness of this mystery, the passage seemed to drag a little.
And it was obvious enough that Carlos was unwilling or unable to
tell anything about what preoccupied him.

I had noticed an intimacy spring up between the ship’s second
mate and Tomas, who was, it seemed to me, forever engaged in long
confabulations in the man’s cabin, and, as much to make talk as
for any other reason, I asked Carlos if he had noticed his depend-
ent’s familiarity. It was noticeable because Castro held aloof from
every other soul on board, Carlos answered me with one of his
nervous and angry smiles.

“Ah, Juan mine, do not ask too many questions! I wish you
could come with me all the way, but I cannot tell you all I know.
I do not even myself know all. It seems that the man is going
to leave the ship in Jamaica, and has letters for that Sefior
Ramon, the merchant, even as I have. Vaya; more I cannot
tell you.”

This struck me as curious, and a little of the whole mystery
seemed from that time to attach to the second mate, who before

‘had been no more to me than a long, sallow Nova Scotian, with a
disagreeable intonation and rather offensive manners. I began
to watch him, desultorily, and was rather startled by something
more than a suspicion that he himself was watching me. On one
occasion in particular I seemed to observe this. “The second mate
was lankily stalking the deck, his hands in his pockets. As he
paused in his walk to spit into the sea beside me, Carlos said:

“And you, my Juan, what will you do in this Jamaica?”

The sense that we were approaching land was already all over
the ship. The second mate leered at me enigmatically, and moved
slowly away. I said that I was going to the Horton Estates,
Rooksby’s, to learn planting under a Mr. Macdonald, the agent.
Carlos shrugged his shoulders. I suppose I had spoken with some
animation.

“‘ Ah,” he said, with his air of great wisdom and varied experi-
ence, of disillusionment, “‘ it will be much the same as it has been
at your home—after the first days. Hard work and a great same-
ness.” He began to cough violently.

I said bitterly enough, “ Yes. It will be always the same with
me. I shall never see life. You've seen all that there is to see, so

a2 ROMANCE

I suppose you do not mind settling down with an old uncle in a
palace.”

He answered suddenly, with a certain darkness of manner,
“That is as God wills. Who knows? Perhaps life, even in my
uncle’s palace, will not be so safe.”

The second mate was bearing down on us again.

I said jocularly, ‘“‘ Why, when I get very tired of life at Horton
Pen, I shall come to see you in your uncle’s town.”

Carlos had another of his fits of coughing.

“ After all, we are kinsmen. I dare say you would give me a
bed,” I went on.

The second mate was quite close to us then.

Carlos looked at me with an expression of affection that a little
shamed my lightness of tone:

“T love you much more than a kinsman, Juan,” he said. “I
wish you could come with me. I try to arrange it. Later, per-
haps, I may be dead. I am very ill.”

He was undoubtedly ill. Campaigning in Spain, exposure in
England in a rainy time, and then the ducking when we came
on board, had done him no good. He looked moodily at the
sea.

“T wish you could come. I will tr

The mate had paused, and was listening quite unaffectedly, be-
hind Carlos’ back.

A moment after Carlos half turned and regarded him with a
haughty stare.

He whistled and walked away.

Carlos muttered something that I did not catch about “ spies of
that pestilent Irishman.” ‘Then: — -

“T will not selfishly take you into any more dangers,” he said.
“ But life on a sugar plantation is not fit for you.”

I felt glad and flattered that a personage so romantic should
deem me a fit companion for himself. He went forward as if with
some purpose.

Some days afterwards the second mate sent for me to his cabin.
He had been on the sick list, and he was lying in his bunk, stripped
to the waist, one arm and one leg touching the floor. He raised
himself slowly when I came in, and spat. He had in a pronounced

”

PART FIRST 33

degree the Nova Scotian peculiarities and accent, and after he had
shaved, his face shone like polished leather.

“Hallo!” he said. “See heeyur, young Kemp, does your neck
just itch to be stretched? ”

I looked at him with mouth and eyes agape.

He spat again, and waved a claw towards the forward bulk-
head.

“They’ll do it for yeh,” he said. “ You’re such a green goose,
it makes me sick a bit. You hevn’t reckoned out the chances, not
quite. It’s a kind of dead reckoning yeh hevn’t had call to make.
Eh?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, bewildered.

He looked at me, grinning, half naked, with amused contempt,
for quite a long time, and at last offered sardonically to open my
eyes for me.

I said nothing.

“Do you know what will happen to you,” he asked, “ ef yeh
don’t get quit of that Carlos of yours?”

I was surprised into muttering that I didn’t know.

“T can tell yeh,” he continued. “ Yeh will get hanged.”

By that time I was too amazed to get angry. I simply suspected
the Blue Nose of being drunk. But he glared at me so soberly
that next moment I felt frightened.

“Hanged by the neck,” he repeated; and then added, “ Young
fellow, you scoot. Take a fool’s advice, and scoot. That Castro
is a blame fool, anyhow. Yeh want men for that job. Men, I
tell you.” He slapped his bony breast.

I had no idea that he could look so ferocious. His eyes fasci-
nated me, and he opened his cavernous mouth as if to swallow me.
His lantern jaws snapped without a sound. He seemed to change
his mind.

“T am done with yeh,” he said, with a sort of sinister restraint.
He rose to his feet, and, turning his back to me, began to shave,
squinting into a broken looking-glass.

I had not the slightest inkling of his meaning. I only knew that
going out of his berth was like escaping from the dark lair of a
beast into a sunlit world. There is no denying that his words, and
still more his manner, had awakened in me a sense of insecurity

34 ROMANCE

that had no precise object, for it was manifestly absurd and im-
possible to suspect my friend Carlos. Moreover, hanging was a
danger so recondite, and an eventuality so extravagant, as to make
the whole thing ridiculous. And yet I remembered how unhappy
I felt, how inexplicably unhappy. Presently the reason was made
clear. I was homesick. I gave no further thought to the second
mate. I looked at. the harbor we were entering, and thought of
the home I had left so eagerly. After all, I was no more than a
boy, and even younger in mind than in body.

Queer-looking boats crawled between the shores like tiny water
beetles. One headed out towards us, then another. I did not want
them to reach us. It was as if I did not wish my solitude to be
disturbed, and I was not pleased with the idea of going ashore.
A great ship, floating high on the water, black, and girt with the
two broad yellow streaks of her double tier of guns, glided out
slowly from beyond a cluster of shipping in the bay. She passed
without a hail, going out under her topsails with a flag at the fore.
Her lofty spars overtopped our masts immensely, and I saw the
men in her rigging looking down on our decks. The only sounds
that came out of her were the piping of boatswains’ calls and the
tramping of feet. Imagining her to be going home, I felt a great
desire to be on board. Ultimately, as it turned out, I went home
in that very ship, but then it was too late. I was another man by
that time, with much queer knowledge and other desires. Whilst
I was looking and longing I heard Carlos’ voice behind me asking
one of our sailors what ship it was.

“Don’t you know a flagship when you see it?” a voice grumbled
surlily. ‘ Admiral Rowley’s,” it continued. ‘Then it rumbled
out some remarks about ‘‘ pirates, vermin, coast of Cuba.”

Carlos came to the side, and looked after the man-of-war in the
distance.

“You could help us,” I heard him mutter.

nd scoot”

a

-
S
S

7

“ Take a fool’s adv

CHAPTER V

HERE was a lad called Barnes, a steerage passenger of

about my own age, a raw, red-headed Northumbrian

yokel, going out as a recruit to one of the West Indian
regiments. He was a serious, strenuous youth, and I had talked a
little with him at odd moments. In my great loneliness I went to
say good-by to him after I had definitely parted with Carlos.

I had been in our cabin. A great bustle of shore-going, of
leave-taking had sprung up all over the ship. Carlos and Castro
had entered with a tall, immobile, gold-spectacled Spaniard,
dressed all in white, and with a certain air of noticing and attentive
deference, bowing a little as he entered the cabin in earnest confer-
ence with Tomas Castro. Carlos had preceded them with a
certain nonchalance, and the Spaniard—it was the Sefior Ramon,
the merchant I had heard of—regarded him as if with interested
curiosity. With Tomas he seemed already familiar. He stood in
the doorway, against the strong light, bowing a little.

With a certain courtesy, touched with indifference, Carlos made
him acquainted with me. Ramon turned his-searching, quietly
analytic gaze upon me.

“ But is the caballero going over, too?” he asked.

Carlos said, ‘‘ No. I think not, now.”

And at that moment the second mate, shouldering his way
through a white-clothed crowd of shore people, made up behind
Sefior Ramon. He held a letter in his hand.

“ { am going over,” he said, in his high nasal voice, and with a
certain ferocity.

Ramon looked round apprehensively.

Carlos said, “‘ The sefior, my cousin, wishes for a Mr. Mac-
donald. You know him, sefior?”

Ramon made a dry gesture of perfect acquaintance. “I think
I have seen him just now,” he said. “I will make inquiries.”

All three of them had followed him, and became lost in the

35

36 ROMANCE

crowd. It was then that, not knowing whether I should ever see
Carlos again, and with a desperate, unhappy feeling of loneliness,
that I had sought out Barnes in the dim immensity of the steer-
age.

an the square of wan light that came down the scuttle he was
cording his hair-trunk—unemotional and very matter-of-fact. He
began to talk in an everyday voice about his plans. An uncle was
going to meet him, and to house him for a day or two before he
went to the barracks.

““ Mebbe we'll meet again,” he said. “ I'll be here many years,
I think.”

He shouldered his trunk and climbed unromantically up the
ladder. He said he would look for Macdonald for me.

It was absurd to suppose that the strange ravings of the second
mate had had an effect on me. ‘‘ Hanged! Pirates!’ Was Carlos
really a pirate, or Castro, his humble friend? It was vile of me
to suspect Carlos. A couple of men, meeting by the scuttle, began
to talk loudly, every word coming plainly to my ears in the still-
ness of my misery, and the large deserted steerage. One of them,
new from home, was asking questions. Another answered:

“Oh, I lost half a seroon the last voyage—the old thing.”

“ Haven’t they routed out the scoundrels yet?” the other
asked.

The first man lowered his voice. I caught only that “ the ad-
miral was an old fool—no good for this job. He’s found out the
name of the place the pirates come from—Rio Medio. That’s the
place, only he can’t get in at it with his three-deckers. You saw
his flagship? ”

Rio Medio was the name of the town to which Carlos was
going—which his uncle owned. They moved away from above.

What was I to believe? What could this mean? But the
second mate’s, “ Scoot, young man,” seemed to come to my ears
like the blast of a trumpet. I became suddenly intensely anxious
to find Macdonald—to see no more of Carlos.

From above came suddenly a gruff voice in Spanish. “ Sefior,
it would be a great folly.”

Tomas Castro was descending the ladder gingerly. He was
coming to fetch his bundle. I went hastily into the distance

PART FIRST 37

of the vast, dim cavern of spare room that served for the
steerage.

““T want him very much,” Carlos said. “I like him. He
would be of help to us.”

“It’s as your worship wills,’ Castro said gruffly. They were
both at the bottom of the ladder. “ But an Englishman there
- would work great mischief. And this youth ie

““T will take him, Tomas,” Carlos said, laying a hand on his
arm.

“Those others will think he is a spy. I know them,” Castro
muttered. “ They will hang him, or work some devil’s mischief.
You do not know that Irish judge—the canaille, the friend of
* priests.”

“He is very brave. He will not fear,” Carlos said.

I came suddenly forward. “I will not go with you,” I said,
before I had reached them even.

Castro started back as if he had been stung, and caught at the
wooden hand that sheathed his steel blade.

“ Ah, it is you, sefior,” he said, with an air of relief and dislike.
Carlos, softly and very affectionately, began inviting me to go to
his uncle’s town. His uncle, he was sure, would welcome me.
Jamaica and a planter’s life were not fit for me.

I had not then spoken very loudly, or had not made my meaning
very clear. I felt a great desire to find Macdonald, and a simple
life that I could understand.

“TI am not going with you,” I said, very loudly this time.

He stopped at once. Through the scuttle of the half-deck we
heard a hubbub of voices, of people exchanging greetings, of
Christian names called out joyously. A tumultuous shuffling of
feet went on continuously over our heads. The ship was crowded
with people from the shore. Perhaps Macdonald was amongst
them, even looking for me.

“ Ah, amigo mio, but you must now,” said Carlos gently—‘‘ you
must ” And, looking me straight in the face with a still,
penetrating glance of his big, romantic eyes, ‘‘ It is a good life,” he
whispered seductively, “and I like you, John Kemp. You are
young—very young yet. But I love you very much for your own
sake, and for the sake of one I shall never see again.”

38 ROMANCE

He fascinated me. He was all eyes in the dusk, standing in a
languid pose just clear of the shaft of light that fell through the
scuttle in a square patch.

I lowered my voice, too. “ What life?” I asked.

“‘ Life in my uncle’s palace,” he said, so sweetly and persuasively

that the suggestiveness of it caused a thrill in me.

His uncle could nominate me to posts of honor fit for a cabal-
lero.

I seemed to wake up. ‘‘ Your uncle the pirate!” I cried, and
was amazed at my own words.

Tomas Castro sprang up, and placed his rough, hot hand over
my lips.

“Be quiet, John Kemp, you fool!” he hissed with sudden
energy.

He had spruced himself, but I seemed to see the rags still flutter
about him. He had combed out his beard, but I could not forget
the knots that had been in it.

“T told your worship how foolish and wrong-headed these
English are,” he said sardonically to Carlos. And then to me,
“Tf the sefior speaks loudly again, I shall kill him.”

He was evidently very frightened of something.

Carlos, silent as an apparition at the foot of the ladder, put a
finger to his lips and glanced upwards.

Castro writhed his whole body, and I stepped backwards. ‘I
know what Rio Medio is,” I said, not very loudly. “It is a nest
of pirates.”

Castro crept towards me again on the points of his toes.
“Sefior Don Juan Kemp, child of the devil,” he hissed, looking
very much frightened, “ you must die! ”

I smiled. He was trembling all over. I could hear the talking
and laughing that went on under the break of the poop. Two
women were kissing, with little cries, near the hatchway. I could
hear them distinctly.

Tomas Castro dropped his ragged cloak with a grandiose
gesture.

“ By my hand!” he added with difficulty.

He was really very much alarmed. Carlos was gazing up the
hatch. I was ready to laugh at the idea of dying by Tomas

PART FIRST 39

Castro’s hand while, within five feet of me, people were laughing
and kissing. I should have laughed had I not suddenly felt his
hand on my throat. I kicked his shins hard, and fell backwards
over achest. He went back a step or two, flourished his arm, beat
his chest, and turned furiously upon Carlos.

“He will get us murdered,” he said. ‘‘ Do you think we are
safe here? If these people here heard that name they wouldn’t
wait to ask who your worship is. “They would tear us to pieces
in an instant. I tell you—moz, Tomas Castro—he will ruin us,
this white fool

Carlos began to cough, shaken speechless as if by an invisible
devil. Castro’s eyes ran furtively all round him, then he looked
at me. He made an extraordinary swift motion with his right
hand, and I saw that he was facing me with a long steel blade dis-
played. Carlos continued to cough. ‘The thing seemed odd,
laughable still. Castro began to parade round me: it was as if he
were a cock performing its saltatory rites before attacking. “There
was the same tenseness of muscle. He stepped with extraordinary
care on the points of his toes, and came to a stop about four feet
from me. I began to wonder what Rooksby would have thought
of this sort of thing, to wonder why Castro himself found it neces-
sary to crouch for such a long time. Up above, the hum of many
people, still laughing, still talking, faded a little out of mind. I
understood, horribly, how possible it would be to die within those
few feet of them. Castro’s eyes were dusky yellow, the pupils a
great deal inflated, the lines of his mouth very hard and drawn
immensely tight. It seemed extraordinary that he should put so
much emotion into such a very easy killing. I had my back against
the bulkhead, it felt very hard against my shoulder-blades. I had
no dread, only a sort of shrinking from the actual contact of the
point, as one shrinks from being tickled. I opened my mouth.
I was going to shriek a last, despairing call, to the light and
laughter of meetings above, when Carlos, still shaken, with one
white hand pressed very hard upon his chest, started forward and
gripped his hand round Castro’s steel. He began to whisper in
the other’s hairy ear. I caught:

“ You are a fool. He will not make us to be molested, he is my
kinsman.”

40 ROMANCE

Castro made a reluctant gesture towards Barnes’ chest that
lay between us.

“‘ We could cram him into that,” he said.

“ Oh, bloodthirsty fool,’ Carlos answered, recovering his breath;
“is it always necessary to wash your hands in blood? Are we not
in enough danger? Up—up! Go see if the boat is yet there. We
must go quickly; up—up He waved his hand towards the
scuttle.

“ But still,” Castro said. He was reluctantly fitting his wooden
hand upon the blue steel. He sent a baleful yellow glare into my
eyes, and stooped to pick up his ragged cloak.

“ Up—mount! ” Carlos commanded.

Castro muttered, ‘ Vamos,’ and began clumsily to climb the
ladder, like a bale of rags being hauled from above. Carlos placed
his foot on the steps, preparing to follow him. He turned his head
round towards me, his hand extended, a smile upon his lips.

“ Juan,” he said, “let us not quarrel. You are very young; you
cannot understand these things; you cannot weigh them; you have
a foolish idea in your head. I wished you to come with us because
I love you, Juan. Do you think I wish you evil? You are
true and brave, and our families are united.” He sighed sud-
denly.

“T do not want to quarrel!” I said. ‘‘I don’t.”

I did not want to quarrel; I wanted more to cry. I was very
lonely, and he was going away. Romance was going out of my
life.

He added musically, “‘ You even do not understand. There is
someone else who speaks for you to me, always—someone else.
But one day you will. I shall come back for you—one day.” He
looked at me and smiled. It stirred unknown depths of emotion in
me. I would have gone with him, then, had he asked me. “ One
day,” he repeated, with an extraordinary cadence of tone.

His hand was grasping mine; it thrilled me like a woman’s; he
stood shaking it very gently.

“One day,” he said, ‘‘I shall repay what I owe you. I wished
you with me, because I go into some danger. I wanted you.
Good-by. Hasta mas ver.”

He leaned over and kissed me lightly on the cheek, then climbed

I felt that the light of Romance was going out of my life

PART FIRST 41

away. I felt that the light of Romance was going out of my life.
As we reached the top of the ladder, somebody began to call harshly,
startlingly. I heard my own name and the words, ‘“‘ mahn ye were
speerin’ after.”

The light was obscured, the voice began clamoring insistently.

“John Kemp, Johnnie Kemp, noo. Here’s the mahn ye were
speerin’ after. Here’s Macdonald.”

It was the voice of Barnes, and the voice of the every day. I
discovered that I had been tremendously upset. The pulses in my
temples were throbbing, and I wanted to shut my eyes—to sleep!
I was tired; Romance had departed. Barnes and the Macdonald
he had found for me represented all the laborious insects of the
world; all the ants who are forever hauling immensely heavy and
immensely unimportant burdens up weary hillocks, down steep
places, getting nowhere and doing nothing.

Nevertheless I hurried up, stumbling at the hatchway against a
man who was looking down. He said nothing at all, and I was
dazed by the light. Barnes remarked hurriedly, “ This ’ll be your
Mr. Macdonald ”’; and, turning his back on me, forgot my exist-
ence. I felt more alone than ever. The man in front of me held
ais head low, as if he wished to butt me.

I began breathlessly to tell him I had a letter from ‘‘ my—my—
Rooksby—brother-in-law—Ralph Rooksby ”—I was panting as if
I had run a long way. He said nothing at all. I fumbled for the
letter in an inner pocket of my waistcoat, and felt very shy. Mac-
donald maintained a portentous silence; his enormous body was
enveloped rather than clothed in a great volume of ill-fitting white
stuff; he held in his hand a great umbrella with a vivid green
lining. His face was very pale, and had the leaden transparency
of a boiled artichoke; it was fringed by a red beard streaked with
gray, as brown flood-water is with foam. I noticed at last that the
reason for his presenting his forehead to me was an incredible
squint—a squint that gave the idea that he was performing some
tortuous and defiant feat with the muscles of his neck.

He maintained an air of distrustful inscrutability. The hand
which took my letter was very large, very white, and looked as if
it would feel horribly flabby. With the other he put on his nose
a pair of enormous mother-of-pearl-framed spectacles—things ex-

42 ROMANCE

actly like those of a cobra’s—and began to read. He had said pre-
cisely nothing at all. It was for him and what he represented that
I had thrown over Carlos and what he represented. I felt that I
deserved to be received with acclamation. I was not. He read the
letter very deliberately, swaying, umbrella and all, with the slow
_movement of a dozing elephant. Once he crossed his eyes at me,
meditatively, above the mother-of-pearl rims. He was so slow, so
deliberate, that I own I began to wonder whether Carlos and
Castro were still on board. It seemed to be at least half an hour
before Macdonald cleared his throat, with a sound resembling
the coughing of a defective pump, and a mere trickle of a voice
asked :

“‘ Hwhat evidence have ye of identitee?”

I hadn’t any at all, and began to finger my buttonholes as shame-
faced as a pauper before a Board. ‘The certitude dawned upon
me suddenly that Carlos, even if he would consent to swear to me,
would prejudice my chances.

I cannot help thinking that I came very near to being cast adrift
upon the streets of Kingston. To my asseverations Macdonald re-
turned nothing but a series of minute “ humphs.” I don’t know
what overcame his scruples; he had shown no signs of yielding, but
suddenly turning on his heel made a motion with one of his flabby
white hands. I understood it to mean that I was to follow him
aft.

The decks were covered with a jabbering turmoil of negroes
with muscular arms and brawny shoulders. All their shining black
faces seemed to be momentarily gashed open to show rows of white,
and were spotted with inlaid eyeballs. “The sounds coming from
them were a bewildering noise. They were hauling baggage about
aimlessly. A large soft bundle of bedding nearly took me off my
legs. There wasn’t room for emotion. Macdonald laid about him
with the handle of the umbrella a few inches from the deck; but
the passage that he made for himself closed behind him.

Suddenly, in the pushing and hurrying, I came upon a little clear
space beside a pile of boxes. Stooping over them was the angular
figure of Nichols, the second mate. He looked up at me, screwing
his yellow eyes together.

“Going ashore,” he asked, “ "long of that Puffing Billy?”

PART FIRST 43

“ What business is it of yours?” I mumbled sulkily.

Sudden and intense threatening came into his yellow eyes:

“Don’t you ever come to you know where,” he said; “I don’t
want no spies on what I do. There’s a man there ’Il crack your
little backbone if he catches you. Don’t yeh come now. Never.”

TENE >, DSM ae
ip i
. i Ant a

PART SECOND
THE GIRL WITH THE LIZARD
CHAPTER I

IO MEDIO?” Sefior Ramon said to me nearly two years
afterwards. ‘‘’The caballero is pleased to give me credit
for a very great knowledge. What should I know of that

town? ‘There are doubtless good men there and very wicked, as in
other towns. Who knows? Your worship must ask the boats’
crews that the admiral has sent to burn the town. ‘They will be
back very soon now.”

He looked at me, inscrutably and attentively, through his gold
spectacles.

It was on the arcade before his store in Spanish Town. Long
sunblinds flapped slightly. Before the next door a large sign pro-
claimed ‘“‘ Office of the Buckatoro Journal.’ It was, as I have
said, after two years—years which, as Carlos had predicted, I had
found to be of hard work, and long, hot sameness. I had come
down from Horton Pen to Spanish Town, expecting a letter from
Veronica, and, the stage not being in, had dropped in to chat with
Ramon over a consignment of Yankee notions, which he was pre-
pared to sell at an extravagantly cheap price. It was just at the
time when Admiral Rowley was understood to be going to make
an energetic attempt upon the pirates who still infested the Gulf
of Mexico and nearly ruined the Jamaica trade of those days.
Naturally enough, we had talked of the mysterious town in which
the pirates were supposed to have their headquarters.

‘TI know no more than others,” Ramon said, “ save, sefior, that
I lose much more because my dealings are much greater. But I do
not even know whether those who take my goods are pirates, as
you English say, or Mexican privateers, as the Havana authorities
say. I do not very much care. Basta, what I know is that every

45

46 ROMANCE

week some ship with a letter of marque steals one of my consign-
ments, and I lose many hundreds of dollars.”

Ramon was, indeed, one of the most frequented merchants in
Jamaica; he had stores in both Kingston and Spanish Town; his
cargoes came from all the seas. All the planters and all the official
class in the island had dealings with him.

“Tt was most natural that the hidalgo, your respected cousin,
should consult me if he wished to go to any town in Cuba. Whom
else should he go to? You yourself, sefior, or the excellent Mr.
Topnambo, if you desired to know what ships in a month’s time are
likely to be sailing for Havana, for New Orleans, or any Gulf port,
you would ask me. What more natural? It is my business, my
trade, to know these things. In that way I make my bread. But
as for Rio Medio, I do not know the place.” He had a touch of
irony in his composed voice. “ But it is very certain,” he went on,
“ that if your Government had not recognized the belligerent rights
of the rebellious colony of Mexico, there would be now no letters
of marque, no accursed Mexican privateers, and I and every one
else in the island should not now be losing thousands of dollars
every year.”

That was the eternal grievance of every Spaniard in the island
—and of not a few of the English and Scotch planters. Spain was
still in the throes of losing the Mexican colonies when Great
Britain had acknowledged the existence of a state of war and a
Mexican Government. Mexican letters of marque had imme-
diately filled the Gulf. No kind of shipping was safe from them,
and Spain was quite honestly powerless to prevent their swarming
on the coast of Cuba—the Ever Faithful Island, itself.

“What can Spain do,” said Ramon bitterly, “ when even your
Admiral Rowley, with his great ships, cannot rid the sea of them?”
He lowered his voice. “I tell you, young sefior, that England will
lose this Island of Jamaica over this business. You yourself are a
Separationist, are you not? . . . No? You live with Separation-
ists. How could I tell?» Many people say you are.”

His words gave me a distinctly disagreeable sensation. I hadn’t
any idea of being a Separationist; I was loyal enough. But I un-

derstood suddenly, and for the first time, how very much like —
one I might look.

PART SECOND 47

“IT myself am nothing,” Ramon went on impassively; “I am
content that the island should remain English. It will never again
be Spanish, nor do I wish that it should. But our little, waspish
friend there ”—he lifted one thin, brown hand to the sign of the
Buckatoro Journal— his paper is doing much mischief. I think
the admiral or the governor will commit him to jail. He is going
to run away and take his paper to Kingston; I myself have bought
his office furniture.”

I looked at him and wondered, for all his impassivity, what he
knew—what, in the depths of his inscrutable Spanish brain, his
dark eyes concealed.

He bowed to me a little. “There will come a very great
trouble,” he said.

Jamaica was in those days—and remained for many years after—
in the throes of a question. The question was, of course, that of
the abolition of slavery. The planters as a rule were immensely
rich and overbearing. ‘They said, ‘‘ If the Home Government tries
to abolish our slavery system, we will abolish the Home Govern-
ment, and go to the United States for protection.” That was
treason, of course; but there was so much of it that the governor,
the Duke of Manchester, had to close his ears and pretend not to
hear. The planters had another grievance—the pirates in the Gulf
of Mexico. There was one in particular, a certain El] Demonio or
Diableto, who practically sealed the Florida passage; it was hardly

‘possible to get a cargo underwritten, and the planters’ pockets felt

it a good deal. Practically, El Demonio had, during the last two
years, gutted a ship once a week, as if he wanted to help
the Kingston Separationist papers. "The planters said, “If the
Home Government wishes to meddle with our internal affairs,
our slaves, let it first clear our seas. . . . Let it hang El
Demonio. ... .”

The Government had sent out one of Nelson’s old captains, Ad-.
miral Rowley, a good fighting man; but when it came to clearing
the Gulf of Mexico, he was about as useless as a prize-fighter trying
to clear a stable of rats. I don’t suppose El Demonio really did
more than a tithe of the mischief attributed to him, but in the
peculiar circumstances he found himself elevated to the rank of
an important factor in colonial politics. The Ministerialist papers

48 ROMANCE

used to kill him once a month; the Separationists made him capture
one of old Rowley’s sloops five times a year. They both lied, of
course. But obviously Rowley and his frigates weren’t much use
against a pirate whom they could not catch at sea, and who lived
at the bottom of a bottle-necked creek with tooth rocks all over the
entrance—that was the sort of place Rio Medio was reported to
besnne.

I hadn’t much cared about either party—I was looking out for
romance—but I inclined a little to the Separationists, because
Macdonald, with whom I lived for two years at Horton Pen, was
himself a Separationist, in a cool Scotch sort of way. He was an
Argyleshire man, who had come out to the island as a lad in 1786,
and had worked his way up to the position of agent to the Rooksby
estate at Horton Pen. He had a little estate of his own, too, at
the mouth of the River Minho, where he grew rice very profitably.
He had been the first man to plant it on the island.

Horton Pen nestled down at the foot of the tall white scars that
end the Vale of St. Thomas and are not much unlike Dover
Cliffs, hanging over a sea of squares of the green cane, alternating
with masses of pimento foliage. Macdonald’s wife was an im-
mensely stout, raven-haired, sloe-eyed, talkative body, the most
motherly woman I have ever known—I suppose because she was
childless.

What was anomalous in my position had passed away with the
next outward mail. Veronica wrote to me; Ralph to his attorney
and the Macdonalds. But by that time Mrs. Mac. had darned
my socks ten times.

The surrounding gentry, the large resident landowners, of whom
there remained a sprinkling in the Vale, were at first inclined to
make much of me. There was Mrs. Topnambo, a withered, very
dried-up personage, who affected pink trimmings; she gave the ton
to the countryside as far as ton could be given to a society that
rioted with hospitality. She made efforts to draw me out of the
Macdonald environment, to make me differentiate myself, because
I was the grandson of an earl. But the Topnambos were the great
Loyalists of the place, and the Macdonalds the principal Separa-
tionists, and I stuck to the Macdonalds. I was searching for ro-
mance, you see, and could find none in Mrs. Topnambo’s white

PART SECOND 49

figure, with its dryish, gray skin, and pink patches round the neck,
that lay forever in dark or darkened rooms, and talked querulously
of “ Your uncle, the earl,’’ whom I had never seen. I didn’t get on
with the men any better. They were either very dried up and
querulous, too, or else very liquorish or boisterous in an incompre-
hensible way. ‘Their evenings seemed to be a constant succession of
shouts of laughter, merging into undignified staggers of white
trousers through blue nights—round the corners of ragged
huts. I never understood the hidden sources of their humor, and
I had not money enough to mix well with their lavishness. I was
too proud to be indebted to them, too. They didn’t even acknowl-
edge me on the road at last; they called me poor-spirited, a thin-
blooded nobleman’s cub—a Separationist traitor—and left me to
superintend niggers and save money. Mrs. Mac., good Separationist
though she was, as became the wife of her husband, had the word
“home” forever on her lips. She had once visited the Rooksbys
at Horton; she had treasured up a host of tiny things, parts of my
forgotten boyhood, and she talked of them and talked of them,
until that past seemed a wholly desirable time, and the present a
dull thing.

Journeying in search of romance—and that, after all, is our
business in this world—is much like trying to catch the horizon.
It lies a little distance before us, and a little distance behind—
about as far as the eye can carry. One discovers that one has
passed through it just as one passed what is to-day our horizon.
One looks back and says, ‘“‘ Why, there it is.” One looks forward
and says the same. It lies either in the old days when we used to,
or in the new days when we shall. I look back upon those days of
mine, and little things remain, come back to me, assume an atmos-
phere, take significance, go to the making of a temps jadis. Prob-
ably, when I look back upon what is the dull, arid waste of to-day,
it will be much the same.

I could almost wish to take again one of the long, uninteresting
night rides from the Vale to Spanish Town, or to listen once more
to one of old Macdonald’s interminable harangues on the folly
of Mr. Canning’s policy, or the virtues of Scotch thrift. “ Jack,
lad,” he used to bellow in his curious squeak of a voice, “‘a gen-
tleman you may be of guid Scots blood. But ye’re a puir body’s son

50 | ROMANCE

for a’ that.” He was set on my making money and turning honest
pennies. I think he really liked me.

It was with that idea that he introduced me to Ramon, “an
esteemed Spanish merchant of Kingston and Spanish Town.” Ra-
mon had seemed mysterious when I had seen him in company with
Carlos and Castro; but re-introduced in the homely atmosphere of
the Macdonalds, he had become merely a saturnine, tall, dusky-
featured, gold-spectacled Spaniard, and very good company. I
learnt nearly all my Spanish from him. The only mystery about
him was the extravagantly cheap rate at which he sold his things
under the flagstaff in front of Admiral Rowley’s house, the King’s
House, as it was called. The admiral himself was said to have
extensive dealings with Ramon; he had at least the reputation of
desiring to turn an honest penny, like myself. At any rate, every-
one, from the proudest planters to the editor of the Buckatoro
Journal next door, was glad of a chat with Ramon, whose knowl-
edge of an immense variety of things was as deep as a draw-
well—and as placid.

I used to buy island produce through him, ship it to New
Orleans, have it sold, and re-import parcels of “ notions,”’ making
a double profit. He was always ready to help me, and as ready
to talk, saying that he had an immense respect for my relations, the
Riegos.

That was how, at the end of my second year in the island, I had
come to talking to him. ‘The stage should have brought a letter
from Veronica, who was to have presented Rooksby with a son
and heir, but it was unaccountably late. I had been twice to the
coach office, and was making my way desultorily back to Ramon’s.
He was talking to the editor of the Buckatoro Journal—the man
from next door—and to another who had, whilst I walked lazily
across the blazing square, ridden furiously up to the steps of the
arcade. The rider was talking to both of them with exaggerated
gestures of his arms. He had ridden off, spurring, and the editor,
a little, gleaming-eyed hunchback, had remained in the sunshine,
talking excitedly to Ramon.

I knew him well, an amusing, queer, warped, Satanic member
of society, who was a sort of nephew to the Macdonalds, and hand
in glove with all the Scotch Separationists of the island. He had

PART SECOND 51

started an extraordinary, scandalous paper that, to avoid sequestra-
tion, changed its name and offices every few issues, and was said by
Loyalists, like the Topnambos, to have an extremely bad influence.

He subsisted a good deal on the charity of people like the Mac-
donalds, and I used sometimes to catch sight of him at evenfall
listening to Mrs. Macdonald; he would be sitting beside her ham-
mock on the veranda, his head very much down on his breast, very
much on one side, and his great hump portending over his little
white face, and ruffling up his ragged black hair. Mrs. Macdonald
clacked all the scandal of the Vale, and the Buckatoro Journal got
the benefit of it all, with adornments.

For the last month or so the Journal had been more than usually
effective, and it was only because Rowley was preparing to con-
found his traducers by the boat attack on Rio Medio, that a war-
rant had not come against David. When I saw him talking to
Ramon, I imagined that the rider must have brought news of a
warrant, and that David was preparing for flight. He hopped
nimbly from Ramon’s steps into the obscurity of his own door.
Ramon turned his spectacles softly upon me.

“There you have it,” he said. “ The folly; the folly! To send
only little boats to attack such a nest of villains. It is inconceiv-
able.”

The horseman had brought news that the boats of Rowley’s
squadron had been beaten off with great loss, in their attack on Rio
Medio.

Ramon went on with an air of immense superiority, ‘‘ And all
the while we merchants are losing thousands.”

His dark eyes searched my face, and it came disagreeably into
my head that he was playing some part; that his talk was delusive,
his anger feigned; that, perhaps, he still suspected me of being a
Separationist. He went on talking about the failure of the boat-
attack. All Jamaica had been talking of it, speculating about it,
congratulating itself on it. British valor was going to tell; four
boats’ crews would do the trick. And now the boats had been
beaten off, the crews captured, half the men killed! Already there
was panic on the island. I could see men coming together in little
knots, talking eagerly. I didn’t like to listen to Ramon, to a
Spaniard talking in that way about the defeat of my countrymen

52 ROMANCE

by his. I walked across the King’s Square, and the stage driving
up just then, I went to the office, and got my correspondence.

Veronica’s letter came like a faint echo, like the sound of very
distant surf, heard at night; it seemed impossible that anyone could
be as interested as she in the things that were happening over there.
She had had a son; one of Ralph’s aunts was its godmother. She
and Ralph had been to Bath last spring; the country wanted
water very badly. Ralph had used his influence, had explained
matters to a very great personage, had spent a little money on the
injured runners. In the meanwhile I had nearly forgotten the
whole matter; it seemed to be extraordinary that they should still
be interested in it.

I was to come back; as soon as it was safe I was to come back;
that was the main tenor of the letter.

I read it in a little house of call, in a whitewashed room that
contained a cardboard cat labeled ‘‘ The Best,” for sole ornament.
Four swarthy fellows, Mexican patriots, were talking noisily about
their War of Independence, and the exploits of a General Trape-
lascis, who had been defeating the Spanish troops over there. It
was almost impossible to connect them with a world that included
Veronica’s delicate handwriting with the pencil lines erased at the
base of each line of ink. ‘They seemed to be infinitely more real.
Even Veronica’s interest in me seemed a little strange; her desire
for my return irritated me. It was as if she had asked me to
return to a state of bondage, after having found myself. Thinking
of it made me suddenly aware that I had become a man, with a
man’s aims, and a disillusionized view of life. It suddenly ap-
peared very wonderful that I could sit calmly there, surveying, for
instance, those four sinister fellows with daggers, as if they were
nothing at all. When I had been at home the matter would have
caused me extraordinary emotions, as many as if I had seen an ele-
phant in a traveling show. As for going back to my old life, it
didn’t seem to be possible.

CHAPTER II

NE night I was riding alone towards Horton Pen. A

large moon hung itself up above me like an enormous

white plate. Finally the sloping roof of the Ferry Inn,
with one disheveled palm tree drooping over it, rose into the disk.
The window lights were reflected like shaken torches in the river.
A mass of objects, picked out with white globes, loomed in the
high shadow of the inn, standing motionless. They resolved them-
selves into a barouche, with four horses steaming a great deal, and
an army of negresses with bandboxes on their heads. A great lady
was on the road; her querulous voice was calling to someone within
the open door that let down a soft yellow light from the top of the
precipitous steps. A nondescript object, with apparently two horns
and a wheel, rested inert at the foot of the sign-post; two negroes
were wiping their foreheads beside it. “That resolved itself into
a man slumbering in a wheelbarrow, his white face turned up to
the moon. A sort of buzz of voices came from above; then a man
in European clothes was silhouetted against the light in the door-
way. He held a full glass very carefully and started to descend.
Suddenly he stopped emotionally. Then he turned half-right and
called back, “‘ Sir Charles! Sir Charles! Here’s the very man!
I protest, the very man!” ‘There was an interrogative roar from

within. It was like being outside a lion’s cage.

_ People appeared and disappeared in front of the lighted door;
windows stood open, with heads craning out all along the inn face.
I was hurrying off the back of my horse when the admiral came
out on to the steps. Someone lit a torch, and the admiral became
a dark, solid figure, with the flash of the gold lace on his coat. He
stood very high in the leg; had small white whiskers, and a large
nose that threw a vast shadow on to his forehead in the upward
light ; his high collar was open, and a mass of white appeared under
his chin; his head was uncovered. A third male face, very white,

53

54 ROMANCE

bobbed up and down beside his shining left shoulder. He kept
on saying:

“What? what? what? Hey, what? ... That man?” He
appeared to be halfway between supreme content and violent
anger. At last he delivered himself. “ Let’s duck him . . . hey?
. . . Let’s duck him!” He spoke with a sort of benevolent
chuckle, then raised his voice and called, “Tinsley! ‘Tinsley!
Where the deuce is Tinsley? ”

A high nasal sound came from the carriage window. “ Sir
Charles! Sir Charles! Let there be no scene in my presence, I
beg.” °

I suddenly saw, halfway up, laboriously ascending the steps, a
black figure, indistinguishable at first on account of deformities.
It was David Macdonald. Since his last, really terrible comments
on the failure of the boat-attack, he had been lying hidden some-
where. It came upon me in a flash that he was making his way
from one hiding place to another. In making his escape from
Spanish Town, either to Kingston or the Vale, he had run
against the admiral and his party returning from the Topnambos’
ball. It was hardly a coincidence: everyone on the road met
at the Ferry Inn. But that hardly made the thing more
pleasant.

Sir Charles continued to clamor for Tinsley, his flag lieutenant,
who, as a matter of fact, was the man drunk in the wheelbarrow.
When this was explained by the shouts of the negroes, he grunted,
“Umph!” turned on the man at his side, and said, “ Here, Old-
ham; you lend a hand to duck the little toad.” It was the sort of
thing that the thirsty climate of Jamaica rendered frequent enough.
Oldham dropped his glass and protested. Macdonald continued
silently and enigmatically to climb the steps; now he was in for
it he showed plenty of pluck. No doubt he recognized that, if the
admiral made a fool of himself, he would be afraid to issue war- ©
rants in soberness. I could not stand by and see them bully the
wretched little creature. At the same time I didn’t, most decid-
edly, want to identify myself with him.

I called out impulsively, “‘ Sir Charles, surely you would not use
violence to a cripple.”

Then, very suddenly, they all got to action, David Macdonald

PART SECOND 55

reaching the top of the steps. Shrieks came from the interior of
the carriage, and from the waiting negresses. I saw three men
were falling upon a little thing like a damaged cat. I couldn’t
stand that, come what might of it.

I ran hastily up the steps, hoping to be able to make them recover
their senses, a force of purely conventional emotion impelling me.
It was no business of mine; I didn’t want to interfere, and I felt
like a man hastening to separate half a dozen fighting dogs too large
to be pleasant.

When I reached the top, there was a sort of undignified scuffle,
and in the end I found myself standing above a ghastly white
gentleman who, from a sitting posture, was gasping out, “ I’ll
commit you! . . . I swear I'll commit you! . . .” I helped him
to his feet rather apologetically, while the admiral behind me was
asking insistently who the deuce I was. ‘The man I had picked up
retreated a little, and then turned back to look at me. The light
was shining on my face, and he began to call out, “I know him.
I know him perfectly well. He’s John Kemp. I'll commit him at
once. ‘The papers are in the barouche.” After that he seemed to
take it into his head that I was going to assault him again. He
bolted out of sight, and I was left facing the admiral. He stared
at me contemptuously. I was streaming with perspiration and up-
braiding him for assaulting a cripple.

The admiral said, ‘‘ Oh, that’s what you think? I will settle
with you presently. This is rank mutiny.”

I looked at Oldham, who was the admiral’s secretary. He
was extremely disheveled about his neck, much as if a monkey had
been clawing him thereabouts. Half of his roll collar flapped on
his heaving chest; his stock hung down behind like a cue. I had
- seen him kneeling on the ground with his head pinned down by the
hunchback. I said loftily:

“What did you set him on a little beggar like that for? You
were three to one. What did you expect?”

The Admiral swore. Oldham began to mop with a lace hand-
kerchief at a damaged upper lip from which a stream of blood was
running; he even seemed to be weeping a little. Finally, he
vanished in at the door, very much bent together. The undaunted
David hopped in after him coolly.

56 ROMANCE

The admiral said, ‘‘ I know your kind. You're a treasonous dog,
sir. This is mutiny. You shall be made an example of.”

Ali the same he must have been ashamed of himself, for presently
he and the two others went down the steps without even looking
at me, and their carriage rolled away.

Inside the inn I found a couple of merchant captains, one asleep
with his head on the table and little rings shining in his great red
ears; the other very spick and span—of what they called the new
school then. His name was Williams—Captain Williams of the
Lion, which he part owned ; a man of some note for the dinners he
gave on board his ship. His eyes sparkled blue and very round in
a round rosy face, and he clawed effusively at my arm.

“ Well done!” he bubbled over. “ You gave it them; strike me,
you did! It did me good to see and hear. I wasn’t going to poke
my nose in, not I. But I admire you, my boy.”

He was a quite guileless man with a strong dislike for the ad-
miral’s blundering—a dislike that all the seamen shared—and for
people of the Topnambo kidney who affected to be above his
dinners. He assured me that I had burst upon those gentry roaring
. . . “like the Bull of Bashan. You should have seen!” and he
drank my health in a glass of punch.

David Macdonald joined us, looming through wreaths of to-
bacco smoke. He was always very nice in his dress, and had washed
himself into a state of enviable coolness.

“They won’t touch me now,” he said. “I wanted that assault
and battery. . . .” He suddenly turned vivid, sarcastic black eyes
upon me. “But you,” he said—‘ my dear Kemp! You're in a
devil of a scrape! They’ll have a warrant out against you under
the Black Act. I know the gentry.”

“Oh, he won’t mind,” Williams struck in, ‘I know him; he’s
a trump. Afraid of nothing.”

David Macdonald made a movement of his head that did duty
for an ominous shake:

“It’s a devil of a mess,” he said. “ But I’ll touch them up.
Why did you hit Topnambo? He’s the spitefullest beast in the
island. ‘They'll make it out high treason, They are capable of
sending you home on this charge.”

“Oh, never say die.” Williams turned to me, “‘ Come dine with

PART SECOND 57

me on board at Kingston to-morrow night. If there’s any fuss I’ll
see what I can do. Or you can take a trip with me to Havana till
it blows over. My old woman’s on board.” His face fell. ‘“ But
there, you'll get round her. I’ll see you through.”

They drank some sangaree and became noisy. I wasn’t very
happy; there was much truth in what David Macdonald had said.
‘Topnambo would certainly do his best to have me in jail—to make
an example of me as a Separationist to please the admiral and the
Duke of Manchester. Under the spell of his liquor Williams be-
came more and more pressing with his offers of help.

“It’s the devil that my missus should be on board, just this trip.
But hang it! come and dine with me. I'll get some of the Kingston
men—the regular hot men—to stand up for you. They will when
they hear the tale.”

‘There was a certain amount of sense in what he said. If war- -
rants were out against me, he or some of the Kingston merchants
whom he knew, and who had no cause to love the admiral, might
help me a good deal.

Accordingly, I did go down to Kingston. It happened to be the
day when the seven pirates were hanged at Port Royal Point. I
had never seen a hanging, and a man who hadn’t was rare in those
days. I wanted to keep out of the way, but it was impossible to
get a boatman to row me off to the Lion. They were all dying to
sce the show, and, half curious, half reluctant, I let myself drift
with the crowd.

The gallows themselves stood high enough to be seen—a long
very stout beam supported by posts at each end. ‘There was a
blazing sun, and the crowd pushed and shouted and’ craned its
thousands of heads every time one heard the cry of “ Here they
come,” for an hour or so. There was a very limpid sky, a very
limpid sea, a scattering of shipping gliding up and down, and the
very silent hills a long way away. ‘There was a large flavor of
Spaniards among the crowd. I got into the middle of a knot of
them, jammed against the wheels of one of the carriages, standing,
hands down, on tiptoe, staring at the long scaffold. ‘There were a
great many false alarms, sudden outcries, hushing again rather
slowly. In between I could hear someone behind me talk
Spanish to the occupants of the carriage. I thought the voice was

58 ROMANCE

Ramon’s, but I could not turn, and the people in the carriage
answered in French, I thought. A man was shouting “ Cool
Drinks ”’ on the other side of them.

Finally, there was a roar, an-irresistible swaying, a rattle of
musket ramrods, a rhythm of marching feet, and the grating of
heavy iron-bound wheels. Seven men appeared in sight above the
heads, clinging to each other for support, and being drawn slowly
along. The little worsted balls on the infantry shakos bobbed all
round their feet. They were a sorry-looking group, those pirates;
very wild-eyed, very ragged, dust-stained, weather-beaten, begrimed
till they had the color of unpolished mahogany. Clinging still to
each other as they stood beneath the dangling ropes of the long
beam, they had the appearance of a group of statuary to forlorn
misery. Festoons of chains completed the “ composition.”

One was a very old man with long yellow-white hair, one a
negro whose skin had no luster at all. The rest were very dark-
skinned, peak-bearded, and had long hair falling round their necks.
A soldier with a hammer and a small anvil climbed into the cart,
and bent down out of sight. There was a ring of iron on iron,
and the man next the very old man raised his arms and began to
speak very slowly, very distinctly, and very mournfully. It was
quite easy to understand him; he declared his perfect innocence.
No one listened to him; his name was Pedro Nones. He ceased
speaking, and someone on a horse, the High Sheriff, I think, gal-
loped impatiently past the cart and shouted. ‘Two men got into
the cart, one pulled the rope, the other caught the pirate by the
elbows. He jerked himself loose, and began to cry out; he seemed
to be lost in amazement, and shrieked:

““Adonde esta el padre? . . . Adonde esta el padre?”

No one answered; there wasn’t a priest of any denomination; I
don’t know whether the omission was purposed. The man’s face
grew convulsed with agony, his eyeballs stared out very white and
vivid, as he struggled with the two men. He began to curse us
epileptically for compassing his damnation. A hoarse patter of
Spanish imprecations came from the crowd immediately round me.
The man with the voice like Ramon’s groaned in a lamentable
way ; someone else said, “ What infamy . . . what infamy! ”

An aged voice said tremulously in the carriage, “‘ This shall be

PART SECOND 59

a matter of official remonstrance.” Another said, “ Ah, these
English heretics! ”

There was a forward rush of the crowd, which carried me away.
Someone in front began to shout orders, and the crowd swayed back
again. he infantry muskets rattled. The commotion lasted some
time. When it ceased, I saw that the man about to die had been
kissing the very old man; tears were streaming down the gray,
parchment-colored cheeks. Pedro Nones had the rope round his
neck; it curved upwards loosely towards the beam, growing taut
as the cart jolted away. He shouted:

“ Adios, viejo, para siempre adi x

My whole body seemed to go dead all over. I happened to look
downwards at my hands; they were extraordinarily white, with the
veins standing out all over them. They felt as if they had been
sodden in water, and it was quite a long time before they recovered
their natural color. ‘The rest of the men were hung after that,
the cart jolting a little way backwards and forwards, and growing
_ less crowded after every journey. One man, who was very large-
framed and stout, had to go through it twice because the rope
broke. He made a good deal of fuss. My head ached, and after
the involuntary straining and craning to miss no details was over,
I felt sick and dazed. ‘The people talked a great deal as they
streamed back, loosening over the broader stretch of pebbles; they
seemed to wish to remind each other of details. I have an idea that
one or two, in the sheer largeness of heart that seizes one after
occasions of popular emotions, asked me in exulting voices if I had
seen the nigger’s tongue sticking out.

_ Others thought that there wasn’t very much to be exultant over.
We had not really captured the pirates; they had been handed over
to the admiral by the Havana authorities—as an international cour-
tesy I suppose, or else because they were pirates of no account and
short in funds, or because the admiral had been making a fuss.in
front of the Morro. It was even asserted by the anti-admiral
faction that the seven weren’t pirates at all, but merely Cuban
mauvais sujets, hawkers of derogatory coplas, and known free-
thinkers.

In any case, excited people cheered the High Sheriff and the
returning infantry, because it was pleasant to hang any kind of

60 ROMANCE

Spaniard. I got nearly knocked down by the kettle-drummers,
who came through the scattering crowd at a swinging quick-step.
As I cannoned off the drums, a hand caught at my arm, and some-
one else began to speak to me. It was old Ramon, who was telling
me that he had a special kind of Manchester goods at his store.
He explained that they had arrived very lately, and that he had
come from Spanish Town solely on their account. One made the
eighth of a penny a yard more on them than on any other kind. If
I would deign to have some of it offered to my inspection, he had
his little curricle just off the road. He was drawing me gently
towards it all the time, and I had not any idea of resisting. He
had been behind in the crowd, he said, beside the carriage of the
commissioner and the judge of the Marine Court sent by the Ha-
vana authorities to deliver the pirates.

It was after that, that in Ramon’s dusky store, I had my first
sight of Seraphina and of her father, and then came my meeting
with Carlos. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw him come
out with extended hand. It was an extraordinary sensation, that
of talking to Carlos again. He seemed to have worn badly. His
face had lost its moist bloom, its hardly distinguishable subcuta-
neous flush. It had grown very, very pale. Dark blue circles took
away from the blackness and sparkle of his eyes. And he coughed,
and coughed.

He put his arm affectionately round my shoulders and said,
“ How splendid to see you again, my Juan.” His eyes had affec-
tion in them, there was no doubt about that, but I felt vaguely
suspicious of him. JI remembered how we had parted on board the
Thames. “ We can talk here,” he added; “‘ it is very pleasant. You
shall see my uncle, that great man, the star of Cuban law, and my
cousin Seraphina, your kinsfolk. They love you; I have spoken
well of you.’ He smiled gayly, and went on, “ This is not a place
befitting his greatness, nor my cousin’s, nor, indeed, my own.” He
smiled again. ‘“‘ But I shall be very soon dead, and to me it matters
little.” He frowned a little, and then laughed. “ But you should
have seen the faces of your officers when my uncle refused to go to
their governor’s palace; there was to have been a fiesta,’ a ‘ recep-
tion’; is it not the word? It will cause a great scandal.”

He smiled with a good deal of fine malice, and looked as if he

PART SECOND 61

expected me to be pleased. I said that I did not quite understand
what had offended his uncle.

“Oh, it was because there was no priest,” Carlos answered,
“when those poor devils were hung. They were canaille. Yes;
but one gives that much even to such. And my uncle was there in
his official capacity as a—a plenipotentiary. He was very much
distressed: we were all. You heard, my uncle himself had advised
their being surrendered to your English. And when there was no
priest he repented very bitterly. Why, after all, it was an infamy.”

He paused again, and leant back against the counter. When his
eyes were upon the ground and his face not animated by talking,
there became lamentably insistent his pallor, the deep shadows
under his eyes, and infinite sadness in the droop of his features, as
if he were preoccupied by an all-pervading and hopeless grief.
When he looked at me, he smiled, however.

“Well, at worst it is over, and my uncle is here in this dirty
place instead of at your palace. We sail back to Cuba this very
evening.” He looked round him at Ramon’s calicos and sugar-
tubs in the dim light, as if he accepted almost incredulously the
fact that they could be in such a place, and the manner of his voice
indicated that he thought our governor’s palace would have been
hardly less barbarous. ‘‘ But I am sorry,” he said suddenly, “ be-
cause I wanted you—you and all your countrymen—to make a
good impression on him. You must do it yourself alone. And you
will. You are not like these others. You are our kinsman, and I
have praised you very much. You saved my life.”

I began to say that I had done nothing at all, but he waved his
hand with a little smile.

“You are very brave,” he said, as if to silence me. “I am not
ungrateful.”

He began again to ask for news from home—from my home.
I told him that Veronica had a baby, and he sighed.

“‘ She married the excellent Rooksby?”’ he asked. “ Ah, what
a waste.” He relapsed into silence again. “There was no woman
in your land like her. She might have And to marry that—
that excellent personage, my good cousin. It is a tragedy.”

“Tt was a very good match,” I answered.

He sighed again. “ My uncle is asleep in there, now,” he said,

‘

62 ROMANCE

after a pause, pointing at the inner door. “We must not wake
him; he is a very old man. You do not mind talking tome? You
will wait to see them? Dofia Seraphina is here, too.”

“You have not married your cousin?” I asked.

I wanted very much to see the young girl who had looked at me
for a moment, and I certainly should have been distressed if Carlos
had said she was married. .

He answered, ‘“‘ What would you have?” and shrugged his
shoulders gently. A smile came into his face. ‘‘ She is very willful.
I did not please her, I do not know why. Perhaps she has seen too
many men like me.”

He told me that, when he reached Cuba, after parting with me
on the Thames, his uncle, “in spite of certain influences,” had
received him quite naturally as his heir, and the future head of the
family. But Seraphina, whom by the laws of convenience he ought
to have married, had quite calmly refused him.

“JT did not impress her; she is romantic. She wanted a very bold
man, a Cid, something that it is not easy to have.”

He paused again, and looked at me with some sort of challenge in
his eyes.

““ She could have met no one better than you,” I said.

He waved his hand a little. ‘“‘ Oh, for that ” he said depre-
catingly. ‘‘ Besides, I am dying. I have never been well since I
went into your cold sea, over there, after we left your sister. You
remember how I coughed on board that miserable ship.”

I did remember it very well.

He went to the inner door, looked in, and then came back to
me.

“Seraphina needs a guide—a controller—someone very strong
and gentle, and kind and brave. My uncle will never ask her to
marry against her wish; he is too old. and has too little will. And
for any man who would marry her—except one—there would be
great dangers, for her and for him. It would need a cool man,
and a brave man, and a good one, too, to hazard, perhaps even life,
for her sake. She will be very rich. All our lands, all our towns,
all our gold.” ‘There was a suggestion of fabulousness in his
dreamy voice. “ They shall never be mine,” he added. “ Vaya.”

He looked at me with his piercing eyes set to an expression that

PART SECOND 63

might have been gentle mockery. At any rate, it also contained
intense scrutiny, and, perhaps, a little of appeal. I sighed myself.

“There is a man called O’Brien in there,” he said. ‘“ He does
us the honor to pretend to my cousin’s hand.”

I felt singularly angry. ‘‘ Well, he’s not a Spaniard,” I said.

Carlos answered mockingly, ‘Oh, for Spaniard, no. He is a
descendant of the Irish kings.”

“ He’s an adventurer,” I said. “ You ought to be on your guard.
You don’t know these bog-trotting fortune-hunters. They’re the
laughter of Europe, kings and all.”

Carlos smiled again. ‘“ He’s a very dangerous man for all that,”
he said. “I should not advise anyone to come to Rio Medio, my
uncle’s town, without making a friend of the Sefor O’Brien.”

He went once more to the inner door, and, after a moment’s
whispering with someone within, returned to me.

“My uncle still sleeps,’ he said. “I must keep you a little
longer. Ah, yes, the Sefior O’Brien. He shall marry my cousin,
I think, when I am dead.”

“You don’t know these fellows,” I said.

“Oh, I know them very well,” Carlos smiled, “‘ there are many
of them at Havana. ‘They came there after what they call the
’98, when there was great rebellion in Ireland, and many good
Catholics were killed and ruined.”

“Then he’s a rebel, and ought to be hung,” I said.

Carlos laughed as of old. ‘‘ It may be, but, my good Juan, we
Christians do not see eye to eye with you. This man rebelled
against your government, but, also, he suffered for the true faith.
He is a good Catholic; he has suffered for it; and, in the Ever
Faithful Island, that is a passport. He has climbed very high; he
is a judge of the Marine Court at Havana. That is why he is here
to-day, attending my uncle in this affair of delivering up the pirates.
My uncle loves him very much. O’Brien was at first my uncle’s
clerk, and my uncle made him a juez, and he is also the intendant
of my uncle’s estates, and he has a great influence in my uncle’s
town of Rio Medio. I tell you, if you come to visit us, it will
be as well to be on good terms with the Sefior Juez O’Brien. My
uncle is a very old man, and if I die before him, this O’Brien, I
think, will end by marrying my cousin, because my poor uncle is

64. ROMANCE

very much in his hands. There are other pretenders, but they
have little chance, because it is so very dangerous to come to my
uncle’s town of Rio Medio, on account of this man’s intrigues and
of his power with the populace.”

I looked at Carlos intently. The name of the town had seemed
to be familiar to me. Now I suddenly remembered that it was
where Nicolas el Demonio, the pirate who was so famous as to be
almost mythical, had beaten off Admiral Rowley’s boats.

“Come, you had better see this Irish hidalgo who wants to do
us so much honor,”—he gave an inscrutable glance at me,—“ but
do not talk loudly till my uncle wakes.”

He threw the door open. I followed him into the room, where
the vision of the ancient Don and the charming apparition of the
young girl had retreated only a few moments before.

CHAPTER III

HE room was very lofty and coldly dim; there were

great bars in front of the begrimed windows. It was

very bare, containing only a long black table, some
packing cases, and half a dozen rocking chairs. Of these, five were
very new and one very old, black and heavy, with a green leather
seat and a coat of arms worked on its back cushions. ‘There were |
little heaps of mahogany sawdust here and there on the dirty tiled
floor, and a pile of sacking in one corner. Beneath a window the
flap of an open trap-door half hid a large green damp-stain; a deep
recess in the wall yawned like a cavern, and had two or three tubs
in the right corner; a man with a blond head, slightly bald as if
he had been tonsured, was rocking gently in one of the new chairs.

Opposite him, with his aged face towards us, sat the old Don
asleep in the high chair. His delicate white hands lay along the
arms, one of them holding a gold vinaigrette; his black, silver-
headed cane was between his silk-stockinged legs. ‘The diamond
buckles of his shoes shot out little vivid rays, even in that gloomy
place. The young girl was sitting with her hands to her temples
and her elbows on the long table, minutely examining the motion-
lessness of a baby lizard, a tiny thing with golden eyes, whom fear
seemed to have turned into stone.

We entered quietly, and after a moment she looked up candidly
into my eyes, and placed her finger on her lips, motioning her head
towards her father. She placed her hand in mine, and whispered
very clearly:

“Be welcome, my English cousin,’
again to the lizard.

She knew all about me from Carlos. The man of whom I had
seen only the top of his head, turned his chair suddenly and glinted
at me with little blue eyes. He was rather small and round, with
very firm flesh, and very white, plump hands. He was dressed in
the black-clothes of a Spanish judge. On his round face there was

6

d

and then dropped her eyes

66 ROMANCE

always a smile like that which hangs around the jaws of a pike—
only more humorous. He bowed a little exaggeratedly to me and
said:

‘« Ah, ye are that famous Mr. Kemp.”

I said that I imagined him the more famous Sefior Juez O’Brien.

“Tt’s little use saying ye arren’t famous,” he said. His voice
had the faint, infinitely sweet twang of certain Irishry; a thing as
delicate and intangible as the scent of lime flowers. “ Our noble
friend ”—he indicated Carlos with a little flutter of one white
hand—“ has told me what make of a dare-devil gallant ye are;
breaking the skulls of half the Bow Street runners for the sake of
a friend in distress. Well, I honor ye for it; I’ve done as much
myself.” He added, “In the old days,” and sighed.

“You mean in the ’98,” I said, a little insolently.

O’Brien’s eyes twinkled. He had, as a matter of fact, nearly
lost his neck in the Irish fiasco, either in Clonmel or Sligo, bolting
violently from the English dragoons, in the mist, to a French man-
of-war’s boats in the bay. To him, even though he was now a judge
in Cuba, it was an episode of heroism of youth—of romance, in
fact. So that, probably, he did not resent my mention of it. I
certainly wanted to resent something that was slighting in his voice,
and patronizing in his manner.

The old Don slumbered placidly, his face turned up to the
distant begrimed ceiling.

“Now, I'll make you a fair offer,” O’Brien said suddenly, after
an intent study of the insolent glance that I gave him. I disliked
him because I knew nothing about the sort of man he was. He
was, as a matter of fact, more alien to me than Carlos. And he
gave me the impression that, if perhaps he were not absolutely the
better man, he could still make a fool of me, or at least make me
look like a fool.

“Tm told you are a Separationist,” he said. ‘‘ Well, it’s like
me. I am an Irishman; there has been a price on my head in an-
other island. And there are warrants out against you here for
assaulting the admiral. We can work together, and there’s nothing
low in what I have in my mind for you.”

He had heard frequently from Carlos that I was a desperate and
aristocratically lawless young man, who had lived in a district

PART SECOND 67

entirely given up to desperate and murderous smugglers. But this
was the first I had heard definitely of warrants against me in
Jamaica. ‘That, no doubt, he had heard from Ramon, who knew
everything. In all this little sardonic Irishman said to me, it
seemed the only thing worth attention. It stuck in my mind while,
in persuasive tones, and with airy fluency, he discoursed of the
profits that could be made, nowadays, in arming privateers under
the Mexican flag. He told me I needn’t be surprised at their being
fitted out in a Spanish colony. ‘‘ There’s more than one aspect to
disloyalty like this,” said he dispassionately, but with a quick wink
contrasting with his tone.

Spain resented our recognition of their rebellious colonies. And
with the same cool persuasiveness, relieved by humorous smiles, he
explained that the loyal Spaniards of the Ever Faithful Island
thought there was no sin in doing harm to the English, even under
the Mexican flag, whose legal existence they did not recognize.

“ Mind ye, it’s an organized thing, I have something to say in it.
It hurts Mr. Canning’s Government at home, the curse of Crom-
well on him and them. They will be dropping some of their own
colonies directly. And as you are a Separationist, small blame to
you, and I am an Irishman, we shan’t cry our eyes out over it.
Come, Mr. Kemp, ’tis all for the good of the Cause . . . And
there’s nothing Jow. You are a gentleman, and I wouldn’t propose
anything that was. The very best people in Havana are interested
in the matter. Our schooners lie in Rio Medio, but I can’t be
there all the time myself.”

Surprise deprived me of speech. I glanced at Carlos. He was
watching us inscrutably. The young girl touched the lizard gently,
but it was too frightened to move. O’Brien, with shrewd glances,
rocked his chair. . . . What did I want? he inquired. ‘To see
life? What he proposed was the life for a fine young fellow like
me. Moreover, I was half Scotch. Had I forgotten the wrongs
of my own country. Had I forgotten the 45?

“You'll have heard tell of a Scotch Chief Justice whose son
spent in Amsterdam the money his father earned on the justice seat
in Edinb’ro’—money paid for rum and run silks . . .”

Of course I had heard of it; everybody had; but it had been
some years before.

68 ROMANCE

“We're backwards hereabouts,’ O’Brien jeered. “ But over
there they winked and chuckled at the judge, and they do the same
in Havana at us.”

Suddenly from behind us the voice of the young girl said, “ Of
what do you discourse, my English cousin?”

O’Brien interposed deferentially. ‘‘ Sefiorita, I ask him to come
to Rio,” he said.

She turned her large dark eyes scrutinizingly upon me, then
dropped them again. She was arranging some melon seeds in a
rayed circle round the lizard that looked motionlessly at her.

“Do not speak very loudly, lest you awaken my father,” she
warned us.

The old Don’s face was still turned to the ceiling. Carlos,
standing behind his chair, opened his mouth a little in a half smile.
I was really angry with O’Brien by that time, with his air of
omniscience, superiority, and self-content, as if he were talking
to a child or someone very credulous and weak-minded.

“ What right have you to speak for me, Senor Juez?” I said in
the best Spanish I could.

The young girl looked at me once more, and then again looked
down.

“Oh, I can speak for you,” he answered in English, ‘“ because I
know. Your position’s this.’ He sat down in his rocking chair,
crossed his legs, and looked at me as if he expected me to show
signs of astonishment at his knowing so much. ‘“‘ You're in a hole.
You must leave this island of Jamaica—surely it’s as distressful as
my own dear land—and you can’t go home, because the runners
would be after you. You’re ‘ wanted’ here as well as there, and
you ve nowhere to go.”

I looked at him, quite startled by this view of my case. He ex-
tended one plump hand towards me, and still further lowered his
voice.

‘Now, I offer you a good berth, a snug berth. And ’tis a pretty
spot.” He got a sort of languorous honey into his voice, and
drawled out, “ The—the Seforita’s.” He took an air of business-
like candor. “ You can help us, and we you; we could do without
you better than you without us. Our undertaking—there’s big
names in it, just as in the Free Trading you know so well, don’t be

PART SECOND 69

saying you don’t—is worked from Havana. What we need is a
man we can trust. We had one—Nichols. You remember the mate
of the ship you came over in. He was Nicola el Demonio; he won’t
be any longer—I can’t tell you why, it’s too long a story.”

I did remember very vividly that cadaverous Nova Scotian mate
of the Thames, who had warned me with truculent menaces
against showing my face in Rio Medio. I remembered his
sallow, shiny cheeks, and the exaggerated gestures of his claw-
like hands.

O’Brien smiled. ‘“ Nichols is alive right enough, but no more
good than if he were dead. And that’s the truth. He pretends
his nerve’s gone; he was a devil among tailors for a time, but he’s
taken to crying now. It was when your blundering old admiral’s
boats had to be beaten off that his zeal cooled. He thinks the
British Government will rise in its strength.” There was a bitter
contempt in his voice, but he regained his calm business tone. ‘“‘ It
will do nothing of the sort. I’ve given them those seven poor devils
that had to die to-day without absolution. So Nichols is done for,
as far as we are concerned. I’ve got him put away to keep him
from blabbing. You can have his place—and better than his place.
He was only a sailor, which you are not. However, you know
enough of ships, and what we want is a man with courage, of
course, but also a man we can trust. Any of the Creoles would bolt
into the bush the moment they’d five dollars in hand. We’ll pay
you well; a large share of all you take.”

I laughed outright. ‘‘ You’re quite mistaken in your man,” I
said. “ You are, really.”

He shook his head gently, and brushed an invisible speck from
his plump black knees.

“You must go somewhere,” he said. ‘‘ Why not go with us?”

I looked at him, puzzled by his tenacity and assurance.

“ Ramon here has told us you battered the admiral last night;
and there’s a warrant out already against you for attempted mur-
der. You're hand and glove with the best of the Separationists in
this island, I know, but they won’t save you from being committed
—for rebellion, perhaps. You know it as well as I do. You were
down here to take a passage to-day, weren’t you, now?”

I remembered that the Island Loyalists said that the pirates and

70 ROMANCE

Separationists worked together to bother the admiral and raise
discontent. Living in the center of Separationist discontent with
the Macdonalds, I knew it was not true. But nothing was too bad
to say against the planters who clamored for union with the United
States.

O’Brien leaned forward. His voice had a note of disdain, and
then took one of deeper earnestness; it sank into his chest. He
extended his hand; his eyebrows twitched. He looked—he was—
a conspirator.

“T tell you I do it for the sake of Ireland,” he said passionately.
“ Every ship we take, every clamor they raise here, is a stroke and
is disgrace for them over there that have murdered us and ruined
my own dear land.” His face worked convulsively; I was in
presence of one of the primeval passions. But he grew calm imme-
diately after. ‘‘ You want Separation for reasons of your own. I
don’t ask what they are. No doubt you and your crony Macdonald
and the rest of them will feather your own nests; I don’t ask. But
help me to be a thorn in their sides—just a little—just a little
longer. What doI put in your way? Just what you want. Have
your Jamaica joined to the United States. You'll be able to come
back with your pockets full, and I’ll be joyful—for the sake of my
own dear land.”

I said suddenly and recklessly—if I had to face one race-passion,
he had to look at another; we were cat and dog—Celt and Saxon,
as it was in the beginning:

“T am not a traitor to my country.”

Then I realized with sudden concern that I had probably awak-
ened the old Don. He stirred uneasily in his chair, and lifted one
hand.

“The moment I go out from here I’ll denounce you,” I said very
low; “I swear I will. You're here; you can’t get away; you'll
swing.”

O’Brien started. His eyes blazed at me. Then he frowned.
“T’ve been misled,” he muttered, with a dark glance at Carlos.
And recovering his jocular serenity, “Ye mean it?” he asked;
“it’s not British heroics? ”

The old Don stirred again and sighed.

The young girl glided swiftly to his side. “ Sefior O’Brien,” she

PART SECOND 71

said, “ you have'so irritated my English cousin that he has awakened
my father.”

O’Brien grinned gently. ‘‘”Tis ever the way,” he said sardon-
ically. ‘“‘ The English fools do the harm and the Irish fool gets
the kicking.” He rose to his feet, quite collected, a spick-and-span
little man. “I suppose I’ve said too much. Well, well! You are
going to denounce the senior judge of the Marine Court of Havana
as a pirate. I wonder who will believe you!”’ He went behind
the old Don’s chair with the gliding motion of a Spanish lawyer,
and slipped down the open trap-hatch near the window.

It was the disappearance of a shadow. I heard some guttural
mutterings come up through the hatch, a rustling, then silence. If
he was afraid of me at all he carried it off very well. I apologized
to the young girl for having awakened her father. Her color was
very high, and her eyes sparkled. If she had not been so very
beautiful I should have gone away at once. She said angrily:

“ He is odious to me, the Sefior Juez. Too long my father has
suffered his insolence.” She was very small, but she had an extraor-
dinary dignity of command. “I could see, Sefior, that he was
annoying you. Why should you consider such a creature?” Her
head drooped. “ But my father is very old.”

I turned upon Carlos, who stood all black in the light of the
window.

“Why did you make me meet him? He may be a judge of
your Marine Court, but he’s nothing but a scoundrelly bog-
trotter.”

Carlos said a little haughtily, ““ You must not denounce him.
You should not leave this place if I feared you would try thus to
bring dishonor on this gray head, and involve this young girl in a
public scandal.” His manner became soft. ‘ For the honor of the
house you shall say nothing. And you shall come with us. I need
you.”

I was full of mistrust now. If he did countenance this unlawful
enterprise, whose headquarters were in Rio Medio, he was not the
man for me. Though it was big enough to be made, by the papers
at home, of political importance, it was, after all, neither more nor
less than piracy. The idea of my turning a sort of Irish traitor
was so extravagantly outrageous that now I could smile at the

72 ROMANCE

imbecility of that fellow O’Brien. As to turning into a sea-thief
for lucre—my blood boiled.

No. There was something else there. Something deep; some-
thing dangerous; some intrigue, that I could not conceive even the
first notion of. But that Carlos wanted anxiously to make use of
me for some purpose was clear. I was mystified to the point of
forgetting how heavily I was compromised even in Jamaica, though
it was worth remembering, because at that time an indictment for
rebellion—under the Black Act—was no_joking matter. I might
be sent home under arrest; and even then, there was my affair with
the runners.

‘It is coming to pay a visit,” he was saying persuasively, ‘‘ while
your affair here blows over, my Juan—and—and—making my last
hours easy, perhaps.”

I looked at him; he was worn to a shadow—a shadow with dark,
wistful eyes. ‘I don’t understand you,” I faltered.

The old man stirred, opened his lids, and put a gold vinaigrette
to his nostrils.

“Of course I shall not denounce O’Brien,” I said. ‘I, too,
respect the honor of your house.”

“ You are even better than I thought you. And if I entreat you,
for the love of your mother—of your sister? Juan, it is not for
myself, it is

The young girl was pouring some drops from a green phial into
a silver goblet; she passed close to us, and handed it to her father,
who had leant a little forward in his chair. Every movement of
hers affected me with an intimate joy; it was as if I had been
waiting to see just that carriage of the neck, just that proud glance
from the eyes, just that droop of eyelashes upon the cheeks, for
years and years.

“No, I shall hold my tongue, and that’s enough,” I said.

At that moment the old Don sat up and cleared his throat.
Carlos sprang towards him with an infinite grace of tender obse-
quiousness. He mentioned my name and the relationship, then
rehearsed the innumerable titles of his uncle, ending “ and patron
of the Bishopric of Pinar del Rio.” ,

I stood stiffy in front of the old man. He bowed his head at
intervals, holding the silver cup carefully whilst his chair rocked

PART SECOND 73

a little. When Carlos’ mellow voice had finished the rehearsing of
the sonorous styles, I mumbled something about “ transcendent
honor.”

He stopped me with a little, deferentially peremptory gesture of
one hand, and began to speak, smiling with a contraction of the lips
and a trembling of the head. His voice was very low, and quav-
ered slightly, but every syllable was enunciated with the same
beauty of clearness that there was in his features, in his hands, in
his ancient gestures.

“The honor is to me,” he said, “ and the pleasure. I behold my
kinsman, who, with great heroism, I am told, rescued my dearly
loved nephew from great dangers; it is an honor to me to be able
to give him thanks. My beloved and lamented sister contracted a
union with an English hidalgo, through whose house your own
very honorable family is allied to my own; it is a pleasure to me to
meet after many years with one who has seen the places where her
later life was passed.”

He paused, and breathed with some difficulty, as if the speech had
exhausted him. Afterwards he began to ask me questions about
Rooksby’s aunt—the lamented sister of his speech. He had loved
her greatly, he said. I knew next to nothing about her, and his
fine smile and courtly, aged, deferential manners made me very
nervous. I felt as if I had been taken to pay a ceremonial visit
to a supreme pontiff in his dotage. He spoke about Horton Priory
with some animation for a little while, and then faltered, and forgot
what he was speaking of. Suddenly he said:

“ But where is O’Brien? Did he write to the Governor here?

I should like you to know the Sefior O’Brien. He is a spiritual
man.”
I forbore to say that I had already seen O’Brien, and the old
man sank into complete silence. It was beginning to grow dark,
and the noise of suppressed voices came from the open trap-door.
Nobody said anything.

I felt a sort of uneasiness; I could by no means understand the
connection between the old Don and what had gone before, and I
did not, in a purely conventional sense, know how long I ought to
stop. The sky through the barred windows had grown pallid.

The old Don said suddenly, “ You must visit my poor town of

74 ROMANCE

Rio Medio,” but he gave no specific invitation and said nothing
more.

Afterwards he asked, rather querulously, ‘“ But where is
O’Brien? He must write those letters for me.”

The young girl said, ‘‘ He has preceded us to the ship; he will
write there.”

She had gone back to her seat. Don Balthasar shrugged his
shoulders to his ears, and moved his hands from his knees. .

“ Without doubt, he knows best,” he said; “ but he should ask
me.”

It grew darker still; the old Don seemed to have fallen asleep
again. Save for the gleam of the silver buckle of his hat, he had
disappeared into the gloom of the place. I remembered my en-
gagement to dine with Williams on board the Lion, and I rose to
my feet. There did not seem to be any chance of my talking to the
young girl. She was once more leaning nonchalantly over the
lizard, and her hair drooped right across her face like clusters of
grapes. There was a gleam on a little piece of white forehead, and
all around and about her there were shadows deepening. Carlos
came concernedly towards me as I looked at the door.

“But you must not go yet,” he said a little suavely; “I have
many things to say. Tell me

His manner heightened my uneasiness to a fear. The expression
of his eyes changed, and they became fixed over my shoulder, while
on his lips the words “‘ You must come, you must come,” trembled,
hardly audible. I could only shake my head. At once he stepped’
back as if resigning. He was giving me up—and it occurred to me
that if the danger of his seduction was over, there remained the
danger of arrest just outside the door.

Someone behind me said peremptorily, “‘ It is time,” and there
was a flickering diminution of the light. I had a faint instanta-
neous view of the old Don dozing, with his head back—of the tall
windows, cut up into squares by the black bars. Something hairily
coarse ran harshly down my face; I grew blind; my mouth, my
eyes, my nostrils were filled with dust; my breath shut in upon me
became a flood of warm air. I had no time to resist. I kicked my
legs convulsively; my elbows were drawn tight against my sides.
Someone grunted under my weight; then I was carried—down,

PART SECOND 75

along, up, down again; my feet were knocking along a wall, and
the top of my head rubbed occasionally against what must have
been the roof of a low stone passage, issuing from under the back
room of Ramon’s store. Finally, I was dropped upon something
that felt like a heap of wood-shavings. My surprise, rage, and
horror had been so great that, after the first stifled cry, I had made
no sound. I heard the footsteps of several men going away.

CHAPTER IV
REMAINED lying there, bound hand and foot, for a long

time; for quite long enough to allow me to collect my senses

and see that I had been a fool to threaten O’Brien. I had
been nobly indignant, and behold! I had a sack thrown over my
head for my pains, and was put away safely somewhere or other.
It seemed to be a cellar.

I was in search of romance, and here were all the elements;
Spaniards, a conspirator, and a kidnaping; but I couldn’t feel a
fool and romantic as well. ‘True romance, I suppose, needs a
whirl of emotions to extinguish all the senses except that of sight,
which it dims. Except for sight, which I hadn’t at all, I had the
use of them all, and all reported unpleasant things.

I ached and smarted with my head in a sack, with my mouth
full of flour that had gone moldy and offended my nostrils; I had
a sense of ignominy, and I was extremely angry; I could see that
the old Don was in his dotage—but Carlos I was bitter against.

I was not really afraid; I could not suppose that the Riegos
would allow me to be murdered or seriously maltreated. But I was
incensed against Fate or Chance or whatever it is—on account of
the ignominious details, the coarse sack, the moldy flour, the stones
of the tunnel that had barked my shins, the tightness of the ropes
that bound my ankles together, and seemed to cut into my wrists
behind my back.

I waited, and my fury grew in a dead silence. How would it
end—with what outrage? I would show my contempt and pre-
serve my dignity by submitting without a struggle—I despised this
odious plot. At last there were voices, footsteps; I found it very
hard to carry out my resolution and refrain from stifled cries and
kicks. I was lifted up and carried, like a corpse, with many
stumbles, by men who sometimes growled as they hastened along.
From time to time somebody murmured “ Take care.” Then I
was deposited into a boat. The world seemed to be swaying,

76

PART SECOND 07

splashing, jarring—and it became obvious to me that I was being
taken to some ship. The Spanish ship, of course. Suddenly I
broke into cold perspiration at the thought that, after all, their
purpose might be to drop me quickly overboard. “Carlos!” I
cried. I felt the point of a knife on my breast. “‘ Silence, sefior! ”
said a gruff voice.

This fear vanished when we came alongside a ship evidently
already under way; but I was handled so roughly and clumsily
that I was thoroughly exhausted and out of breath, by the time
I was got on board. All was still around me; I was left alone on
a settee in the main cabin, as I imagined. For a long time I made
no movement; then a door opened and shut. There was a mur-
mured conversation between two voices. This went on in animated
whispers for atime. At last I felt as if someone were trying, rather
ineffectually, to remove the sack itself. Finally, that actually did
rub its way over my head, and something soft and silken
began to wipe my eyes with a surprising care, and even tender-
ness. “This was stupidly done,” came a discontented remark;
“you do not handle a caballero like this.”

““ And how else was it to be done, to that kind of caballero? ”
was the curt retort.

By that time I had blinked my eyes into a condition for re-
maining open for minute stretches. TTwo men were bending over
me—Carlos and O’Brien himself. ‘The latter said:

“ Believe me, your mistake made this necessary. This young
gentleman was about to become singularly inconvenient, and he is
in no way harmed.”

He spoke in a velvety voice, and walked away gently through
the darkness. Carlos followed with the lantern dangling at arm’s
length; strangely enough he had not even looked at me. I suppose
- he was ashamed, and I was too proud to speak to him, with my
hands and feet tied fast. “The door closed, and I remained sitting
in the darkness. Long small windows grew into light at one end
of the place, curved into an outline that suggested a deep recess.
The figure of a crowned woman, that moved rigidly up and down,
was silhouetted over my body. Groaning creaks of wood and the
faint swish of water made themselves heard continuously.

I turned my head to a click, I saw a door open a little way, and

78 ROMANCE

the small blue flame of a taper floated into the room. Then the
door closed with a definite sound of shutting in. The light shone
redly through protecting fingers, and upwards on to a small face.
It came to a halt, and I made out the figure of a girl leaning across
a table and looking upwards. There was a click of glass, and then
a great blaze of light created a host of shining things; a glitter of
gilded carvings, red velvet couches, a shining table, a low ceiling,
painted white, on carved rafters. A large silver lamp she had
lighted kept on swinging to the gentle motion of the ship.

She stood just in front of me; the girl that I had seen through the
door; the girl I had seen play with the melon seeds. She was
breathing fast—it agitated me to be alone with her—and she had
a little shining dagger in her hand.

She cut the rope round my ankles, and motioned me imperiously
to turn round.

“Your hands—your hands!”

I turned my back awkwardly to her, and felt the grip of small,
cool, very firm fingers upon my wrists. My arms fell apart, numb
and perfectly useless; I was half aware of pain in them, but it
passed unnoticed among a cloud of other emotions. I didn’t feel
my finger-tips because I had the agitation, the flutter, the tantaliza-
tion of looking at her.

I was all the while conscious of the—say, the irregularity of my
position, but I felt very little fear. There were the old Don, an
ineffectual, silver-haired old gentleman, who obviously was not a
pirate; the sleek O’Brien, and Carlos, who seemed to cough on the
edge of a grave—and this young girl. There was not any future
that I could conceive, and the past seemed to be cut off from me by
a narrow, very dark tunnel through which I could see nothing
at all.

The young girl was, for the moment, what counted most on the
whole, the only thing the eye could rest on. She affected me as an
apparition familiar, yet absolutely new in her charm. I had seen
her gray eyes; I had seen her red lips; her dark hair, her lithe ges-
tures; the carriage of her head; her throat, her hands. I knew
her; I seemed to have known her for years. A rush of strange,
sweet feeling made me dumb. She was looking at me, her lips set,
her eyes wide and still; and suddenly she said:

PART SECOND 79

“ Ask nothing. The land is not far yet. You can escape, Carlos
thought. . . . Butno! You would only perish for nothing. Go
with God.” - She pointed imperiously towards the square stern-
ports of the cabin.

Following the direction of her hand, my eyes fell upon the image
of a Madonna; a rather large—perhaps a third life-size; with a gilt
crown, a pink serious face bent a little forward over a pink naked
child that perched on her left arm and raised one hand. It stood
on a bracket, against the rudder casing, with fat cherubs’ heads
carved on the supports. ‘The young girl crossed herself with a
swift motion of the hand. The stern-ports, glazed in small panes,
were black, and gleaming in a white frame-work.

““Go—go—go with God,” the girl whispered urgently. ‘‘ There
is a boat _

I made a motion to rise; I wanted to go. The idea of having
my liberty, of its being again a possibility, made her seem of less
importance; other things began to have their share. But I could
not stand, though the blood was returning, warm and tingling, in
my legs and hands. She looked at me with a sharp frown pucker-
ing her brows a little; beat a hasty tattoo with one of her feet, and
cast a startled glance towards the forward doors that led on deck.
Then she walked to the other side of the table, and sat looking at
me in the glow of the lamp.

“Your life hangs on a thread,” she murmured.

I answered, “‘ You have given it to me. Shall I never. 2
I was acutely conscious of the imperfection of my language.

She looked at me sharply; then lowered her lids. Afterwards
she raised them again. “Think of yourself. Every moment
1S. ”»

“‘T will be as quick as I can,” I said.

I was chafing my ankles and looking up at her. I wanted, very
badly, to thank her for taking an interest in me, only I found
it very difficult to speak to her. Suddenly she sprang to her
feet: ;

“That man thinks he can destroy you. I hate him—TI detest
him! You have seen how he treats my father.”

It struck me, like a blow, that she was merely avenging
O’Brien’s insolence to her father. I had been kidnaped against

80 ROMANCE

Don Balthasar Riego’s will. It gave me very well the measure of
the old man’s powerlessness in face of his intendant—who was
obviously confident of afterwards soothing the resentment.

I was glad I had not thanked her for taking an interest in me.
I was distressed, too, because once more I had missed Romance by
an inch.

Someone kicked at the locked door. A voice cried—I could not
help thinking—warningly, ‘‘ Seraphina, Seraphina,”’ and another
voice said with excessive softness, “Seforita! Voyons! quelle
folie.”

She sprang at me. Her hand hurt my wrist as she dragged me
aft. I scrambled clumsily into the recess of the counter, and put
my head out. The night air was very chilly and full of brine; a
little boat towing by a long painter was sheering about in the phos-
phorescent wake of the ship. The sea itself was pallid in the light
of the moon, invisible to me. A little astern of us, on our port
quarter, a vessel under a press of canvas seemed to stand still;
looming up like an immense pale ghost. She might have been
coming up with us, or else we had just passed her—I couldn’t tell.
I had no time to find out, and I didn’t care. The great thing was
to get hold of the painter. The whispers of the girl urged me, but
the thing was not easy; the rope, fastened higher up, streamed
away out of reach of my hand. At last, by watching the moment
when it slacked, and throwing myself half out of the stern window,
I managed to hook it with my finger-tips. Next moment it was
nearly jerked away from me, but I didn’t lose it, and the boat
taking a run just then under the counter, I got a good hold. The
sound of another kick at the door made me swing myself out, head
first, without reflection. I got soused to the waist before I had
reached the bows of the boat. With a frantic effort I clambered up
and rolled in. When I got on my legs, the jerky motion of tossing
had ceased, the boat was floating still, and the light of the stern
windows was far away already. The girl had managed to cut the
painter.

The other vessel was heading straight for me, rather high on
the water, broad-beamed, squat, and making her way quietly, like
a shadow. The land might have been four or five miles away—
I had no means of knowing exactly. It looked like a high black

PART SECOND 81

cloud, and purply-gray mists here and there among the peaks hung
like scarfs.

I got an oar over the stern to scull, but I was not fit for much
exertion. I stared at the ship I had left. Her stern windows
glimmered with a slight up-and-down motion; her sails seemed to
fall into black confusion against the blaze of the moon; faint cries
came to me out of her, and by the alteration of her shape I under-
stood that she was being brought to, preparatory to lowering a boat.
She might have been half a mile distant when the gleam of her
stern windows swung slowly round and went out. I had no mind
to be recaptured, and began to scull frantically towards the other
vessel. By that time she was quite near—near enough for me to
hear the lazy sound of the water at her bows, and the occasional
flutter of a sail. “The land breeze was dying away, and in the wake
of the moon I perceived the boat of my pursuers coming over, black
and distinct; but the other vessel was nearly upon me. I sheered
under her starboard bow and yelled, “ Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy! ”

There was a lot of noise on board, and no one seemed to hear my
shouts. Several voices yelled, “That cursed Spanish ship ahead
is heaving-to athwart our hawse.’” The crew and the officers
seemed all to be forward shouting abuse at the “ lubberly Dago,”
and it looked as though I were abandoned to my fate. The ship
forged ahead in the light air; I failed in my grab at her fore
chains, and my boat slipped astern, bumping against the side. I
missed the main chain, too, and yelled all the time with desperation,
“ For God’s sake! Ship ahoy! For God’s sake throw me a rope,
somebody, before it’s too late!”

I was giving up all hope when a heavy coil—of a brace, I suppose
fell upon my head, nearly knocking me over. Half stunned as I
was, desperation lent me strength to scramble up her side hand over
hand, while the boat floated away from under my feet. I was done
up when I got on the poop. A yell came from forward, ‘‘ Hard
aport.” ‘Then the same voice addressed itself to abusing the Span-
ish ship very close to us now. “‘ What do you mean by coming-to
right across my bows like this?” it yelled in a fury.

I stood still in the shadows on the poop. We were drawing
slowly past the stern of the Spaniard, and O’Brien’s voice answered
in English:

82 ROMANCE

“We are picking up a boat of ours that’s gone adrift with a
man. Have you seen anything of her?”

“*‘ No—confound you and your boat.”

Of course those forward knew nothing of my being on board.
The man who had thrown me the rope—a passenger, a certain
Major Cowper, going home with his wife and child—had walked
away proudly, without deigning as much as to look at me twice, as
if to see a man clamber on board a ship ten miles from the land
was the most usual occurrence. He was, I found afterwards, an
absurd, pompous person, as stiff as a ramrod, and so full of his
own importance that he imagined he had almost demeaned himself
by his condescension in throwing down the rope in answer to my
despairing cries. On the other hand, the helmsman, the only other
person aft, was so astounded as to become quite speechless. © I
could see, in the light of the binnacle thrown upon his face, his
staring eyes and his open mouth.

The voice forward had subsided by then, and as the stern of the
Spanish ship came abreast of the poop, I stepped out of the shadow
of the sails, and going close to the rail I said, not very loud—there
was no need to shout—but very distinctly:

“T am out of your clutches, Mr. O’Brien, after all. I promise
you that you shall hear of me yet.”

Meanwhile, another man had come up from forward on the
poop, growling like a bear, a short, rotund little man, the captain
of the ship. The Spanish vessel was dropping astern, silent, with
her sails all black, hiding the low moon. Suddenly a hurried hail
came out of her.

“ What ship is this?”

““What’s that to you, blank your eyes? The Breeze, if you want
to know. What are you going to do about it?” the little skipper
shouted fiercely. In the light wind the ships were separating
slowly.

“Where are you bound to?” hailed O’Brien’s voice again.

The little skipper laughed with exasperation, “ Dash your
blanked impudence. To Havana, and be hanged to you. Any-
thing more you want to know? And my name’s Lumsden, and I
am sixty years old, and if I had you here, I would put a head on
you for getting in my way, you ss

PART SECOND 83

He stopped, out of breath. Then, addressing himself to his
passenger:

“That’s the Spanish chartered ship that brought these sanguin-
ary pirates that were hanged this morning, major. She’s taking
the Spanish commissioner back. I suppose they had no man-of-
war handy for the service in Cuba. Did you ever.

He had caught sight of me for the first time, and positively
jumped a foot high with astonishment.

“Who on earth’s that there? ”

His astonishment was comprehensible. The major, without
deigning to enlighten him, walked proudly away. He was too
dignified a person to explain.

It was left to me. Frequenting, as I had been doing, Ramon’s
store, which was a great gossiping center of the maritime world
in Kingston, I knew the faces and the names of most of the mer-
chant captains who used to gather there to drink and swap yarns.
I was not myself quite unknown to little Lumsden. I told him
all my story, and all the time he kept on scratching his bald head,
full of incredulous perplexity. Old Sefior Ramon! Such a respec-
table man. And I had been kidnaped? From his store!

“If I didn’t see you here in my cuddy before my eyes, I wouldn’t
believe a word you say,” he declared absurdly.

But he was ready enough to take me to Havana. However, he
‘insisted upon calling down his mate, a gingery fellow, short, too,
but wizened, and as stupid as himself.

“ Here’s that Kemp, you know. ‘The young fellow that Mac-
donald of the Horton Pen had picked up somewhere two years ago.
The Spaniards in that ship kidnaped him—so he says. He says
they are pirates. But that’s a government chartered ship, and all
the pirates that have ever been in her were hanged this morning in
Kingston. But here he is, anyhow. And he says that at home he
had throttled a Bow Street runner before he went off with the
smugglers, he says. Did you ever hear the likes of it, Mercer? I
shouldn’t think he was telling us a parcel of lies; hey, Mercer?”

And the two grotesque little chaps stood nodding their heads at
me sagaciously.

“ He’s a desperate character, then,” said Mercer at last, cau-
tiously. “‘ This morning, the very last thing I heard ashore, as I

84 ROMANCE

went to fetch the fresh beef off, is that he had been assaulting a
justice of the peace on the highroad, and had been trying to knock
down the admiral, who was coming down to town in a chaise with
Mr. Topnambo. There’s a warrant out against him under the
Black Act, sir.”

Then he brightened up considerably. ‘‘So he must have been
kidnaped or something after all, sir, or he would be in chokey
now.”

It was true, after all. Romance reserved me for another fate, for
another sort of captivity, for more than one sort. And my imagi-
nation had been captured, enslaved already by the image of that
young girl who had called me her English cousin, the girl with the
lizard, the girl with the dagger! And with every word she uttered
romance itself, if I had only known it, the romance of persecuted
lovers, spoke to me through her lips.

That night the Spanish ship had the advantage of us in a fresh-
ening wind, and overtook the Breeze. Before morning dawned she
passed us, and before the close of the next day she was gone out of
sight ahead, steering, apparently, the same course with ourselves.

Her superior sailing had an enormous influence upon my for-
tunes; and I was more adrift in the world than ever before, more
in the dark as to what awaited me than when I was lugged along
with my head in a sack. I gave her but little thought. A sort of
numbness had come over me. I could think of the girl that had cut
me free, and for all my resentment at the indignity of my treat-
ment, I had hardly a thought to spare for the man who had me
bound. I was pleased to remember that she hated him; that she
had said so herself. For the rest, I had a vague notion of going
to the English Consul in Havana. After all, I was not a complete
nobody. I was John Kemp, a gentleman, well connected; I could .
prove it. The Bow Street runner had not been dead as I had
thought. The last letter from Veronica informed me that the
man had given up thief-catching, and was keeping, now, a little
inn in the neighborhood. Ralph, my brother-in-law, had helped
him to it, no doubt. I could come home safely now.

And I had discovered I was no longer anxious to return home.

CHAPTER V

HERE wasn’t any weirdness about the ship when I

woke in the sunlight. She was old and slow and rather

small. She carried Lumsden (master), Mercer (mate),
a crew that seemed no better and no worse than any other crew,
and the old gentleman who had thrown me the rope the night be-
fore, and who seemed to think that he had derogated from his
dignity in doing it. He was a Major Cowper, retiring from a
West Indian regiment, and had with him his wife and a disagree-
able little girl, with a yellow pigtail and a bony little chest and
arms.

On the whole, they weren’t the sort of people that one would
have chosen for companions on a pleasure-trip. Major Cowper’s
wife lay all day in a deck chair, alternately drawing to her and
repulsing the whining little girl. The major talked to me about
the scandals with which the world was filled, and kept a suspicious
eye upon his wife. He spent the morning in shaving what part of
his face his white whiskers did not cover, the afternoon in enume-
rating to me the subjects on which he intended to write to the
Horse Guards. He had grown entirely amiable, perhaps for the
reason that his wife ignored my existence.

Meantime I let the days slip by idly, only wondering how I
could manage to remain in Havana and breathe the air of the same
island with the girl who had delivered me. Perhaps some day we
might meet—who knows? I was not afraid of that Irishman.

It never occurred to me to bother about the course we were
taking, till one day we sighted the Cuban coast, and I heard Lums-
den and Mercer pronounce the name of Rio Medio. The two
ridiculous old chaps talked of Mexican privateers, which seemed
to rendezvous off that place. ‘They pointed out to me the headland
near the bay. There was no sign of privateer or pirate, as far as
the eye could reach. In the course of beating up to windward we
closed in with the coast, and then the wind fell.

85

86 ROMANCE

I remained motionless against the rail for half the night, looking
at the land. Not a single light was visible. A wistful, dreamy
longing, a quiet longing pervaded me, as though I had been
drugged. I dreamed, as young men dream, of a girl’s face. She
was sleeping there within this dim vision of land. Perhaps this

was as near as I should ever be able to approach her. I felt a —

sorrow without much suffering. A great stillness reigned around
the ship, over the whole earth. At last I went below and fell
asleep.

I was awakened by the idea that I had heard an extraordinary
row—shouting and stamping. But there was a dead silence, to
which I was listening with all my ears. Suddenly there was a little
pop, as if someone had spat rather vigorously; then a succession of
shouts, then another little pop, and more shouts, and the stamping
overhead. A woman began to shriek on the other side of the bulk-
head, then another woman somewhere else, then the little girl. I
hurried on deck, but it was minutes before I could make things
fit together. I saw Major Cowper on the poop; he was brandish-
ing a little pistol and apostrophizing Lumsden, who was waving —
ineffectual arms towards the sky; and there was a great deal of
shouting, forward and overhead. Cowper rushed at me, and ex-
plained that something was an abominable scandal, and that there
were women on board. He waved his pistol towards the side; I
noticed that the butt was inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Lumsden
rushed at him and clawed at his clothes, imploring him not to be
rash.

We were so close in with the coast that the surf along the shore
gleamed and sparkled in full view.

Someone shouted aloft, “ Look out! They are firing again.”

Then only I noticed, a quarter of a mile astern and between the.
land and us, a little schooner, rather low in the water, courtesying
under a cloud of white canvas—a wonderful thing to look at. It _
was as if I had never seen anything so instinct with life and the joy
of it. A snowy streak spattered away from her bows at each
plunge. She came at a great speed, and a row of faces looking our
way became plain, like a beady decoration above her bulwarks.
She swerved a little out of her course, and a sort of mushroom of
smoke grew out of her side; there was a little gleam of smoldering

PART SECOND 87

light hidden in its heart. The spitting bang followed again, and
something skipped along the wave-tops beside us, raising little
pillars of spray that drifted away on the wind. The schooner came
back on her course, heading straight for us; a shout like groaned
applause went up from on board us. Lumsden hid his face in his
hands. ai

I could hear little Mercer shrieking out orders forwards. We
were shortening sail. The schooner, luffing a little, ranged abreast.
A hail like a metal blare came out of her.

“Tf you donn’d heef-to we seenk you! We seenk you! By
God!”

Major Cowper was using abominable language beside me. Sud-
denly he began to call out to someone:

“Go down . . . go down, I say.”

A woman’s face disappeared into the hood of the companion like
a rabbit’s tail into its burrow. ‘There was a great volley of cracks
from the loose sails, and the ship came to. At the same time the
schooner, now on our beam and stripped of her light kites, put in
stays and remained on the other tack, with her foresheet to wind-
ward.

Major Cowper said it was a scandal. The country was going
to the dogs because merchantmen were not compelled by law to
carry guns. He spluttered into my ears that there wasn’t so much

“as a twopenny signal mortar on board, and no more powder than
enough to load one of his dueling pistols. He was going to write
to the Horse Guards.

A blue-and-white ensign fluttered up to the main gaff of the
schooner; a boat dropped into the water. It all went breathlessly
—I hadn’t time to think. I saw old Cowper run to the side and
aim his pistol overboard; there was an ineffectual click; he made
a gesture of disgust, and tossed it on deck. His head hung deject-
edly down upon his chest.

Lumsden said, “‘ Thank God, oh, thank Ged!” and the old man
turned on him like a snarling dog.

“You infernal coward,” he said. “ Haven’t you got a spark of
courage?”

A moment after, our decks were invaded by men, brown and
ragged, leaping down from the bulwarks one after the other.

88 ROMANCE

They had come out at break of day (we must have been ob-
served the evening before), a big schooner—full of as ill-favored,
ragged rascals as the most vivid imagination could conceive. Of
course, there had been no resistance on our part. We were out-
sailed, and at the first ferocious hail the halyards had been let go
by the run, and all our crew had bolted aloft. A few bronzed
bandits posted abreast of each mast kept them there by the menace
of bell-mouthed blunderbusses pointed upwards. Lumsden and
Mercer had been each tied flat down to a spare spar. “They pre-
sented an appearance too ridiculous to awaken genuine compassion.
Major Cowper was made to sit on a hen-coop, and a bearded pirate,
with a red handkerchief tied round his head and a cutlass in his
hand, stood guard over him. The major looked angry and crest-
fallen. The rest of that infamous crew, without losing a moment,
rushed into the cuddy to loot the cabins for wearing apparel,
jewelry, and money. They squabbled amongst themselves, throw-
ing the things on deck into a great heap of booty.

The schooner flying the Mexican flag remained hove to abeam.
But in the man in command of the boarding party I recognized
Tomas Castro!

He was a pirate. My surmises were correct. He looked the
part to the life, in a plumed hat, cloaked to the chin, and standing
apart in a saturnine dignity.

“ Are you going to have us all murdered, Castro?” I asked, with
indignation. To my surprise he did not seem to recognize me;
indeed, he pretended not to see me at all. I might have been thin
air for any sign he gave of being aware of my presence; but,
turning his back on me, he addressed himself to the ignobly captive
Lumsden, telling him that he, Castro, was the commander of that
Mexican schooner, and menacing him with dreadful threats of
vengeance for what he called the resistance we had offered to a
privateer of the Republic. I suppose he was pleased to qualify with -
the name of armed resistance the miserable little pop of the major’s
pocket pistol. To punish that audacity he announced that no
private property would be respected.

“You shall have to give up all the money on board,” he yelled
at the wretched man lying there like a sheep ready for slaughter.
The other could only gasp and blink. Castro’s ferocity was so

PART SECOND 89,

remarkable that for a moment it struck me as put on. ‘There was
no necessity for it. We were meek and silent enough, only poor
Major Cowper muttered:

“ My wife and child. . . .”

The ragged brown men were pouring on deck from below; their
arms full of bundles. Half a dozen of them started to pull off the
main hatch tarpaulin. Up aloft the crew looked down with scared
eyes. I began to say excitedly, in my indignation, almost into his
very ear:

“I know you, Tomas Castro—I know you, Tomas Castro.”

Even then he seemed not to hear; but at last he looked into my
face balefully, as if he wished to convey the plague to me.

“ Hold your tongue,” he said very quickly in Spanish. ‘‘ This
is folly!” His little hawk’s beak of a nose nestled in his mustache.
He waved his arm and declared forcibly, “I don’t know you. I
am Nikola el Demonio, the Mexican.”

Poor old Cowper groaned. ‘The reputation of Nikola el De-
monio, if rumors were to be trusted, was a horrible thing for a
man with women depending on him.

Five or six of these bandits were standing about Lumsden, the
major, and myself, fingering the locks of their guns. Poor old
Cowper, breaking away from his guard, was raging up and down
the poop; and the big pirate kept him off the companion truculently.
The major wanted to get below, the little girl was screaming in
the cuddy, and we could hear her very plainly. It was rather
horrible. Castro had gone forward into the crowd of scoundrels
round the hatchway. It was only then that I realized that Major
Cowper was in a state of delirious apprehension and fury; I seemed
to remember at last that for a long time he had been groaning
somewhere near me. He kept on saying:

“Oh, for God’s sake—for God’s sake—my poor wife.”

I understood that he must have been asking me to do something.

It came as a shock to me. I had a vague sensation of his fears.
Up till then I hadn’t realized that anyone could be much interested
in Mrs. Cowper.

He caught hold of my arm, as if he wanted support, and
stuttered :

“ Couldn’t you—couldn’t you speak to——” He nodded in the

go ROMANCE

direction of Tomas Castro, who was bent and shouting down the
hatch. ‘“ Try to——” the old man gasped. “ Didn’t you hear
the child scream?” His face was pallid and wrinkled, like a piece
of crumpled paper; his mouth was drawn on one side, and his lips
quivered one against the other. ;

I went to Castro and caught him by the arm. He spun round
and smiled discreetly.

“We shall be using force upon you directly. Pray resist, sefior ;
but not too much. What? His wife? ‘Tell that stupid Inglez
with whispers that she is safe.” He whispered with an air of
profound intelligence, ‘‘ We shall be ready to go as soon as these
foul swine have finished their stealing. I cannot stop them,” he
added.

I could not pause to think what he might mean. The child’s
shrieks resounding louder and louder, I ran below. There were a
couple of men in the cabin with the women. Mrs. Cowper was ~
lying back upon a sofa, her face very white and drawn, her eyes
wide open. Her useless hands twitched at her dress; otherwise she
was absolutely motionless, like a frozen woman. ‘The black nurse
was panting convulsively in a corner—a palpitating bundle of
orange and purple and white clothes. The child was rushing round
and round, shrieking. The two men did nothing at all. One of
them kept saying in Spanish:

““But—we only want your rings. But—we only want your
rings.”

The other made feeble efforts to catch the child as it rushed
past him. He wanted its earrings—they were contraband of war,
I suppose.

Mrs. Cowper was petrified with terror. Explaining the desires
of the two men was like shouting things into the ear of a very
deaf woman. She kept on saying:

“Will they go away then? Will they go away then?” All the
while she was drawing the rings off her thin fingers, and handing
them to me. I gave them to the ruffians whose presence seemed
to terrify her out of her senses. I had no option. I could do
nothing else. Then I asked her whether she wished me to remain
with her and the child. She said:

“Yes. No. Go away. Yes. No—let me think.”

PART SECOND 91

Finally it came into my head that in the captain’s cabin she
would be able to talk to her husband through the deck ventilator,
and, after a time, the idea filtered through to her brain. She
could hardly walk at all. The child and the nurse ran in front of
us, and, practically, I carried her there in my arms. Once in the
stateroom she struggled loose from me, and, rushing in, slammed
the door violently in my face. She seemed to hate me.

CHAPTER VI

WENT on deck again. On the poop about twenty men had

surrounded Major Cowper; his white head was being jerked

backwards and forwards above their bending backs; they had
got his old uniform coat off, and were fighting for the buttons. I
had just time to shout to him, “ Your wife’s down there, she’s all
right!” when very suddenly I became aware that Tomas Castro
was swearing horribly at these thieves. He drove them away, and
we were left quite alone on the poop, I holding the major’s coat
over my arm. Major Cowper stooped down to call through the
skylight. I could hear faint answers coming up to him.

Meantime, some of the rascals left on board the schooner had
filled on her in a light wind, and, sailing round our stern, had
brought their vessel alongside. Ropes were thrown on board and
we lay close together, but the schooner with her dirty decks looked
to me, now, very sinister and very sordid.

Then I remembered Castro’s extraordinary words; they sug-
gested infinite possibilities of a disastrous nature, I could not tell
just what. The explanation seemed to be struggling to bring itself
to light, like a name that one has had for hours on the tip of a
tongue without being able to formulate it. Major Cowper rose
stiffly, and limped to my side. He looked at me askance, then
shifted his eyes away. Afterwards, he took his coat from my arm.
I tried to help him, but he refused my aid, and jerked himself pain-
fully into it. It was too tight for him. Suddenly, he said:

“You seem to be deuced intimate with that man—deuced in-
timate.”

His tone caused me more misgiving than I should have thought
possible. He took a turn on the deserted deck; went to the sky-
light; called down, “ All well, still?” waited, listening with his
head on one side, and then came back to me.

“You drop into the ship,” he said, ‘‘ out of the clouds. Out of
the clouds, I say. You tell us some sort of cock-and-bull story.

02

PART SECOND 93

I say it looks deuced suspicious.” He took another turn and came
back. ‘“‘ My wife says that you took her rings and—and—gave
them to——” He had an ashamed air. It came into my head
that that hateful woman had been egging him on to this through
the skylight, instead of saying her prayers.

“Your wife!” I said. ‘“ Why, she might have been murdered
—if I hadn’t made her give them up. I believe I saved her life.”

He said suddenly, “‘ Tut, tut!” and shrugged his shoulders. He
hung his head for a minute, then he added, “ Mind, I don’t say—
I don’t say that it mayn’t be as you say. You're a very nice young
fellow .. . But what I say is—I am a public man—you ought
to clear yourself.” He was beginning to recover his military

bearing. ;

“ Oh! don’t be absurd,” I said.

One of the Spaniards came up to me and whispered, ‘“‘ You must
come now. We are going to cast off.”” At the same time Tomas
Castro prowled to the other side of the ship, within five yards of
us. I called out, ‘‘ Tomas Castro! Tomas Castro! I will not go.
with you.” The man beside me said, ‘‘ Come, sefior! Vamos!”

Suddenly Castro, stretching his arm out at me, cried, “ Come,
hombres. This is the caballero; seize him.” And to me in his
broken English he shouted, “ You may resist, if you like.”

This was what I meant to do with all my might. The ragged
crowd surrounded me; they chattered like monkeys. One man irri-
tated me beyond conception. He looked like an inn-keeper in knee-
breeches, had a broken nose that pointed to the left, and a
double chin. More of them came running up every minute.
I made a sort of blind rush at the fellow with the broken nose; my
elbow caught him on the soft folds of flesh and he skipped back-
wards; the rest scattered in all directions, and then stood at a dis-
tance, chattering and waving their hands. And beyond them I saw
old Cowper gesticulating approval. ‘The man with the double
chin drew a knife from his sleeve, crouched instantly, and sprang at
me. I hadn’t fought anybody since I had been at school; raising
my fists was like trying a dubious experiment in an emergency. I
caught him rather hard on the end of his broken nose; I felt the
contact on my right, and a small pain in my left hand. His arms
went up to the sky; his face, too. But I had started forward to

94 ROMANCE

meet him, and half a dozen of them flung their arms round me from
behind.

I seemed to have an exaggerated clearness of vision; I saw each
brown dirty paw reach out to clutch some part of me. I was not
angry any more; it wasn’t any good being angry, but I made a
fight for it. There were dozens of them; they clutched my wrists,
my elbows, and in between my wrists and my elbows, and my
shoulders. One pair of arms was round my neck, another round my
waist, and they kept on trying to catch my legs with ropes. We
seemed to stagger all over the deck; I expect they got in each other’s
way; they would have made a better job of it if they hadn’t been
such a multitude. I must then have got a crack on the head, for
everything grew dark; the night seemed to fall on us, as we fought.

Afterwards I found myself lying gasping on my back on the
deck of the schooner; four or five men were holding me down.
Castro was putting a pistol into his belt. He stamped his foot
violently, and then went and shouted in Spanish:

“Come you all on board. You have done mischief enough, fools
of Lugarefios. Now we go.”

I saw, as in a dream of stress and violence, some men making
ready to cast off the schooner, and then, in a supreme effort, an
effort of lusty youth and strength, which I remember to this day,
I scattered men like chaff, and stood free.

For the fraction of a second I stood, ready to fall myself, and
looking at prostrate men. It was a flash of vision, and then I made
a bolt for the rail. I clambered furiously ; I saw the deck of the old
bark; I had just one exulting sight of it, and then Major Cowper
uprose before my eyes and knocked me back on board the schooner,
tumbling after me himself.

Twenty men flung themselves upon my body. I made no move-
ment. The end had come. I hadn’t the strength to shake off a
fly, my heart was bursting my ribs. I lay on my back and managed
to say, “ Give me air.” I thought I should die.

Castro, draped in his cloak, stood over me, but Major Cowper
fell on his knees near my head, almost sobbing:

““My papers! My papers! I tell you I shall starve. Make
them give me back my papers. They aint any use to them—my
pension—mortgages—not worth a penny piece to you.”

PART SECOND 95

He crouched over my face, and Spaniards stood around, won-
dering. He begged me to intercede, to save him those papers of
the greatest importance.

Castro preserved his attitude of a conspirator. I was touched
by the major’s distress, and at last I condescended to address Castro
on his behalf, though it cost me an effort, for I was angry, indig-
nant, and humiliated.

““Whart—whart? What do I know of his papers? Let him
find them.” He waved his hand loftily.

The deck was hillocked with heaps of clothing, of bedding,
casks of rum, old hats, and tarpaulins. Cowper ran in and out
among the plunder, like a pointer in a turnip field. He was
groaning.

Beside one of the pumps was a small pile of shiny cases; ship’s
instruments, a chronometer in its case, a medicine chest.

Cowper tottered at a black dispatch-box. ‘‘ There, there!” he
said; “I tell you I shall starve if I don’t have it. Ask him—ask
him ” He was clutching me like a drowning man.

Castro raised the inevitable arm towards heaven, letting his
round black cloak fall into folds like those of an umbrella. Cow-
per gathered that he might take his japanned dispatch-box; he
seized the brass handles and rushed towards the side, but at the last
moment he had the good impulse to return to me, holding out his
hand, and spluttering distractedly, “ God bless you, God bless you.”
After a time he remembered that I had rescued his wife and child,
and he asked God to bless me for that, too. ‘‘ If it is ever neces-
sary,” he said, “‘ on my honor, if you escape, I will come a thousand
miles to testify. On my honor—remember.” He said he was going
to live in Clapham. ‘That is as much as I remember. I was held
pinned down to the deck, and he disappeared from my sight. Be-
fore the ships had separated, I was carried below in the cabin of
the schooner.

They left me alone there, and I sat with my head on my arms
for a long time. I did not think of anything at all; I was too
utterly done up with my struggles, and there was nothing to be
thought about. I had grown to accept the meanness of things
as if I had aged a great deal. I had seen men scratch each other’s
faces over coat buttons, old shoes—over Mercer’s trousers. My

96 ROMANCE

own future did not interest me at this stage. I sat up and looked
round me.

I was in a small, bare cabin, roughly wainscoted and exceedingly
filthy. There were the grease-marks from the backs of heads all
along a bulkhead above a wooden bench; the rough table, on which
my arms rested, was covered with layers of tallow spots. Bright
light shone through a porthole. Two or three ill-assorted muskets
slanted about round the foot of the mast—a long old piece, of the
time of Pizarro, all red velvet and silver chasing, on a swiveled
stand, three English fowling-pieces, and a coachman’s blunderbuss.
A man was rising from a mattress stretched on the floor; he placed
a mandolin, decorated with red favors, on the greasy table. He
was shockingly thin, and so tall that his head disturbed the candle-
soot on the ceiling. He said: “ Ah, I was waiting for the cavalier
to awake.”

He stalked round the end of the table, slid between it and the
side, and grasped my arm with wrapt earnestness as he settled him-
self slowly beside me. He wore a red shirt that had become rather
black where his long brown ringlets fell on his shoulders; it had
tarnished * gilt buttons ciphered “‘G. R.,” stolen, I suppose, from
some English ship.

“T beg the Sefior Caballero to listen to what I have to records
he said, with intense gravity. “I cannot bear this much longer—
no, I cannot bear my sufferings much longer.”

His face was of a large, classical type; a close-featured, rather
long face, with an immense nose that from the front resembled the
section of a bell; eyebrows like horseshoes, and very large-pupiled
eyes that had the purplish-brown luster of a horse’s. His air was
mournful in the extreme, and he began to speak resonantly as if
his chest were a sounding-board. He used immensely long sen-
tences, of which I only understood one-half.

“What, then, is the difference between me, Manuel-del- Popolo
Isturiz, and this Tomas Castro? The Sefior Caballero can tell
at once. Look at me. I am the finer man. I would have you ask
the ladies of Rio Medio, and leave the verdict to them. This
Castro is an Andalou—a foreigner. And we, the braves of Rio
Medio, will suffer no foreigner to make headway with our ladies.
Yet this Andalusian is preferred because he is a humble ‘friend of

PART SECOND 97

the great Don, and because he is for a few days given the com-
mand. I ask you, senor, what is the radical difference between
me, the sailing captain of this vessel, and him, the fighting captain
for a few days. Is it not I that am, as it were, the brains of it,
and he only its knife? I ask the Sefior Caballero.”

I didn’t in the least know what to answer. His great eyes wist-
fully explored my face. I expect I looked bewildered.

““T lay my case at your feet,’ he continued. “ You are to be
our chief leader, and, on account of your illustrious birth and re-
nowned intelligence, will occupy a superior position in the council

-of the notables. Is it not so? Has not the Sefor Juez O’Brien
so ordained? You will give ear to me, you will alleviate my in-
dignant sufferings?” He implored me with his eyes for a long
time.

Manuel-del-Popolo, as he called himself, pushed the hair back
from his forehead. I had noticed that the love-locks were plaited
with black braid, and that he wore large dirty silk ruffles.

“The caballero,” he continued, marking his words with a long,
white finger atap on the table, ‘“‘ will represent my views to the
notables. My position at present, as I have had the honor to ob-
serve, is become unbearable. Consider, too, how your worship and
I would work together. What lightness for you and me. You
will find this Castro unbearably gross. But I—I assure you I am
a man of taste—an improvisador—an artist. My songs are cele-
brated. And yet! .. .”

He folded his arms again, and waited; then he said, employing
his most impressive voice:

“T have influence with the men of Rio. I could raise a riot.
We Cubans are a jealous people; we do not love that foreigners
should take our best from us. We do not love it; we will not
suffer it. Let this Castro bethink himself and go in peace, leaving
us and our ladies. As the proverb says, ‘It is well to build a
bridge for a departing enemy.’ ”

He began to peer at me more wistfully, and his eyes grew more
luminous than ever. This man, in spite of his grotesqueness, was
quite in earnest, there was no doubting that.

“T have a gentle spirit,” he began again, “a gentle spirit. I am
submissive to the legitimate authorities. What the Sefior Juez

98 ROMANCE

O’Brien asks me to do, I do. I would put a knife into anyone who
inconvenienced the Sefior Juez O’Brien, who is a good Catholic;
we would all do that, as is right and fitting. But this Castro—
this Andalou, who is nearly as bad as a heretic! When my day
comes, I will have his arms flayed and the soles of his feet, and I
will rub red pepper into them; and all the men of Rio who do not
love foreigners will applaud. And I will stick little thorns under
his tongue, and I will cut off his eyelids with little scissors, and set
him facing the sun. Caballero, you would love me; I have a gentle
spirit. I am a pleasant companion.” He rose and squeezed round
the table. ‘ Listen ”’—his eyes lit up with rapture—“ you shall
hear me. It is divine—ah, it is very pleasant, you will say.”

He seized his mandolin, slung it round his neck, and leant
against the bulkhead. The bright light from the port-hole gilded
the outlines of his body, as he swayed about and moved his long
fingers across the strings; they tinkled metallically. He sang in a
nasal voice:

‘*Listen!’ the young girls say as they hasten to the barred window.
‘Listen! Ah, surely that is the guitar of
Man—u—el—del-Popolo,
As he glides along the wall in the twilight.’”

It was a very long song. He gesticulated freely with his hand
in between the scratching of the strings, which seemed to be a
matter of luck. His eyes gazed distantly at the wall above my
head. The performance bewildered and impressed me; I wondered
if this was what they had carried me off for. It was like being
mad. He made a decresendo tinkling, and his lofty features lapsed
into their normal mournfulness.

At that moment Castro put his face round the door, then entered
altogether. He sighed in a satisfied manner, and had an air of
having finished a laborious undertaking.

“We have arranged the confusion up above,” he said to Manuel-
del-Popolo; “ you may go and see to the sailing. . . . Hurry; it
is growing late.”

Manuel blazed silently, and stalked out of the door as if he had

an electric cloud round his head. Tomas Castro turned towards
me.

PART SECOND 99

“You are better?” he asked benevolently. “ You exerted your-
self too much. . . . But still, if you liked ” He picked up
the mandolin, and began negligently scratching the strings. I no-
ticed an alteration in him; he had grown softer in the flesh in the
past years; there were little threads of gray in the knotted curls of
his beard. It was as if he had lived well, on the whole. He bent
his head over the strings, plucked one, tightened a peg, plucked it
again, then set the instrument on the table, and dropped onto the
mattress. “ Will you have some rum?” he said. “ You have
grown broad and strong, like a bull. . . . You made those men
fly, sacré nom d’une pipe. . . . One would have thought you were
in earnest. . . . Ah, well!” He stretched himself at length on
the mattress, and closed his eyes.

I looked at him to discover traces of irony. "There weren’t any.
He was talking quietly ; he even reproved me for having carried the
pretense of resistance beyond a joke.

“You fought too much; you struck many men—and hard. You
will have made enemies. The picaros of this dirty little town are
as conceited as pigs. You must take care, or you will have a knife
in your back.”

He lay with his hands crossed on his stomach, which was round
like a pudding. After a time he opened his eyes, and looked at the
dancing white reflection of the water on the grimy ceiling.

“To think of seeing you again, after all these years,” he said.
“T did not believe my ears when Don Carlos asked me to fetch you
like this. Who would have believed it? But, as they say,” he
added philosophically, “‘ The water flows to the sea, and the little
stones find their places.’”’ He paused to listen to the sounds that
came from above. ‘‘ That Manuel is a fool,” he said without
rancor; “he is mad with jealousy because for this day I have
command here. But, all the same, they are dangerous pigs, these
slaves of the Sefior O’Brien. I wish the town were rid of them.
One day there will be a riot—a function—with their jealousies
and madness.”

I sat and said nothing, and things fitted themselves together,
little patches of information going in here and there like the pieces
of a puzzle map. O’Brien had gone on to Havana in the ship from
which I had escaped, to render an account of the pirates that had

100 ROMANCE

been hung at Kingston; the Riegos had been landed in boats at Rio
Medio, of course.

“That poor Don Carlos!” Castro moaned lamentably. “ They
had the barbarity to take him out in the night, in that raw fog. He
coughed and coughed ; it made me faint to hear him. He could not
even speak to me—his Tomas; it was pitiful. He could not speak
when we got to the Casa.”

I could not really understand why I had been a second: time
kidnaped. Castro said that O’Brien had not been unwilling that
I should reach Havana. It was Carlos that had ordered Tomas to
take me out of the Breeze. He had come down in the raw morning,
before the schooner had put out from behind the point, to impress
very elaborate directions upon Tomas Castro; indeed, it was whilst
talking to Tomas that he had burst a blood-vessel.

“ He said to me: ‘Have a care now. Listen. He is my dear
friend, that Sefior Juan. I love him as if he were my only brother.
Be very careful, Tomas Castro. Make it appear that he comes
to us much against his will. Let him be dragged on board by
many men. You are to understand, Tomas, that he is a youth of
noble family, and that you are to be as careful of compromising
him as you are of the honor of Our Lady.’ ”

Tomas Castro looked across at me. “ You will be able to report
well of me,” he said; ‘‘ I did my best. If you are compromised, it
was you who did it by talking to me as if you knew me.”

I remembered, then, that Tomas certainly had resented my seem-
ing to recognize him before Cowper and Lumsden. He closed his
eyes again. After a time he added:

“Vaya! After all, it is foolishness to fear being compromised.
You would never believe that his Excellency Don Balthasar had
led a riotous life—to look at him with his silver head. It is said
he had three friars killed once in Seville, a very, very long time
ago. It was dangerous in those days to come against our Mother,
the Church.” He paused, and undid his shirt, laying bare an in-
credibly hairy chest; then slowly kicked off his shoes. ‘“‘ One stifles
here,” he said. “ Ah! in the old days ss

Suddenly he turned to me and said, with an air of indescribable
interest, as if he were gloating over an obscene idea:

“So they would hang a gentleman like you, if they caught you?:

PART SECOND 101

What savages you English people are!—what savages! Like can-
nibals! You did well to make that comedy of resisting. Quel
pays! . . . Whata people . . . I dream of them still. . . .
The eyes; the teeth! Ah, well! in an hour we shall be in Rio.
I must sleep. . . .”

CHAPTER VII

Y two of the afternoon we were running into the inlet of
Rio Medio. I had come on deck when Tomas Castro had
started out of his doze. I wanted to see. We went round
violently as I emerged, and, clinging to the side, I saw, in a whirl,
tall, baked, brown hills dropping sheer down to a strip of flat land
and a belt of dark-green scrub at the water’s edge; little pink
squares of house-walls dropped here and there, mounting the hill-
side among palms, like men standing in tall grass, running back,
hiding in a steep valley ; silver-gray huts with ragged dun roofs, like
disheveled shocks of hair; a great pink church-face, very tall and
narrow, pyramidal towards the top, and pierced for seven bells, but
having only three. It looked as, if it had been hidden for centuries
in the folds of an ancient land, as it lay there asleep in the blighting
sunlight.

When we anchored, Tomas, beside me in saturnine silence,
grunted and spat into the water.

“‘ Look here,” I said. ‘‘ What is the meaning of it all? What
is it? What is at the bottom?”

He shrugged his shoulders gloomily. “If your worship does
not know, who should?” he said. “It is not for me to say why
people should wish to come here.”

“Then take me to Carlos,” I said. “I must get this settled.”

Castro looked at me suspiciously. ‘‘ You will not excite him?”
he said. “I have known people die right out when they were like
that.”

“ Oh, I won’t excite him,” I said.

As we were rowed ashore, he began to point out the houses of
the notables. Rio Medio had been one of the principal ports of
the Antilles in the seventeenth century, but it had failed before the
rivalry of Havana because its harbor would not take the large
vessels of modern draft. Now it had no trade, no life, no any-
thing except a bishop and a great monastery, a few retired officials

“102

PART SECOND 103

from Havana. A large settlement of ragged thatched huts and
clay hovels lay to the west of the cathedral. The Casa Riego was
an enormous palace, with windows like loopholes, facing the shore.
Don Balthasar practically owned the whole town and all the sur-
rounding country, and, except for his age and feebleness, might
have been an absolute monarch.

He had lived in Havana with great splendor, but now, in his
failing years, had retired to his palace, from which he had since
only twice set foot. This had only been when official ceremonies
of extreme importance, such as the international execution of
pirates that I had witnessed, demanded the presence of someone of
his eminence and luster. Otherwise he had lived shut up in his

- palace. There was nowhere in Rio Medio for him to go to.

He was said to regard his intendente O’Brien as the apple of
his eye, and had used his influence to get him made one of the
judges of the Marine Court. The old Don himself probably knew
nothing about the pirates. “The inlet had been used by buccaneers

ever since the days of Columbus; but they were below his serious
consideration, even if he had ever seen them, which Tomas Castro
doubted.

There was no doubting the sincerity of his tone.

“ Oh, you thought J was a pirate!” he muttered. “ For a day
—yes—to oblige a Riego, my friend—yes! Moreover, I hate that
familiar of the priests, that soft-spoken Juez, intendente, intriguer
—that O’Brien. A sufferer for the faith! Que Picardia! Have I,
too, not suffered for the faith? I am the trusted humble friend of
the Riegos. But, perhaps, you think Don Balthasar is himself a
pirate! He who has in his veins the blood of the Cid Campeador ;
whose ancestors have owned half this island since the days of
Christopher himself. . . .”

“ Has he nothing whatever to do with it?” I asked. “ After all,
it goes on in his own town.”

“Oh, you English,” he muttered; “you are all mad! Would
one of your great nobles be a pirate? Perhaps they would—God
knows. Alas, alas!” he suddenly broke off, “ when I think that
my Carlos shall leave his bones in this ungodly place. . . .”

I gave up questioning Tomas Castro; he was too much for me.

We entered the grim palace by the shore through an imposing

104 ) ROMANCE

archway, and mounted a broad staircase. In a lofty room, giving
off the upper gallery round the central court of the Casa Riego,
Carlos lay in a great bed. I stood before him, having pushed aside
Tomas Castro, who had been cautiously scratching the great
brilliant mahogany panels with a dirty finger-nail.

‘Damnation, Carlos!” I said. ‘“ This is the third of your treach-
eries. What do you want with me?”

You might well have imagined he was a descendant of the Cid
Campeador, only to look at him lying there without a quiver of a
feature, his face stainlessly white, a little bluish in extreme lack of
blood, with all the nobility of death upon it, like an alabaster efigy
of an old knight in a cathedral. On the red-velvet hangings of the
bed was an immense coat-of-arms, worked in silk and surrounded by
a collar, with the golden sheep hanging from the ring. The shield
was patched in with an immense number of quarterings—lions
rampant, leopards courant, fleurs de lis, castles, eagles, hands, and
arms. His eyes opened slowly, and his face assumed an easy,
languorous smile of immense pleasure.

“Ah, Juan,” he said, “ se bienvienido, be welcome, be welcome.”

Castro caught me roughly by the shoulder, and gazed at me with
blazing, yellow eyes.

“You should not speak roughly to him,” he said. ‘‘ English
beast! He is dying.”

“ No, I won’t speak roughly to him,” I answered. “I see.”

I did see. At first I had been suspicious; it might have been put
on to mollify me. But one could not put on that blueness of tinge,
that extra—nearly final—touch of the chisel to the lines round the
nose, that air of restfulness that nothing any more could very much
disturb. ‘There was no doubt that Carlos was dying.

“Treacheries—no. You had to come,” he said suddenly. “I
need you. I am glad, dear Juan.’ He waved a thin long hand a

little towards mine. ‘‘ You shall not long be angry. It had to be

done—you must forgive the means.”

His air was so gay, so uncomplaining, that it was hard to believe
it came from him.

“You could not have acted worse if you had owed me a grudge,

Carlos,” I said. “ I want an explanation. But I don’t want to kill
VOUS ob. So"

PART SECOND 105

“ Oh, no, oh, no,” he said; “ in a minute I will tell.”

He dropped a gold ball into a silver basin that was by the bed-
side, and it sounded like a great bell. A nun in a sort of coif that
took the lines of a buffalo’s horns glided to him with a gold cup,
from which he drank, raising himself a little. Then the religious
went out with Tomas Castro, who gave me a last ferocious glower
from his yellow eyes. Carlos smiled.

“They try to make my going easy,” he said. “ Vamos! The

- pillow is smooth for him who is well loved.” He shut his
‘eyes. Suddenly he said, “Why do you, alone, hate me, John
Kemp? What have I done?”

“God knows I don’t hate you, Carlos,” I answered.

“You have always mistrusted me,” he said. “ And yet I am,
perhaps, nearer to you than many of your countrymen, and I have
always wished you well, and you have always hated and mistrusted
me. From the very first you mistrusted me. Why?”

It was useless denying it; he had the extraordinary incredulity
of his kind. I remembered how I had idolized him as a boy at

home.

“Your brother-in-law, my cousin Rooksby, was the very first to
believe that I was a pirate. I, a vulgar pirate! I, Carlos Riego!
Did he not believe it—and you?” He glanced a little ironically,
and lifted a thin white finger towards the great coat-of-arms.
“That sort of thing,” he said, “‘ amigo mio, does not allow one to
pick pockets.” He suddenly turned a little to one side, and fixed
me with his clear eyes. ‘“‘ My friend,” he said, “ if I told you that
Rooksby and your greatest Kent earls carried smugglers’ tubs, you
would say I was an ignorant fool. Yet they, too, are magistrates.
The only use I have ever made of these ruffians was to-day, to
bring you here. It was a necessity. That O’Brien had gone on to
take you when you arrived. You would never have come alive out
of Havana. I was saving your life. Once there, you could never
have escaped from that man.”

~ I saw suddenly that this might be the truth. There had been

. something friendly in Tomas Castro’s desire not to compromise me

before the people on board the ship. Obviously he had been acting

a part, with a visible contempt for the pilfering that he could not
prevent. He had been sent merely to bring me to Rio Medio.

106 ROMANCE

“T never disliked you,” I protested. ‘I do not understand what
you mean. All I know is, that you have used me ill—outrageously
ill. You have saved my life now, you say. That may be true; but
why did you ever make me meet with that man O’Brien?”

“ And even for that you should not hate me,” he said, shaking
his head on the silk pillows. ‘‘I never wished you anything but
well, Juan, because you were honest and young, of noble blood,
good to look upon; you had done me and my friend good service,
to your own peril, when my own cousin had deserted me. And I
loved you for the sake of another. I loved your sister. We have a
proverb: ‘A man is always good to the eyes in which the sister
hath found favor.’ ”

I looked at him in amazement. ‘“ You loved Veronica!” I said.
“But Veronica is nothing at all. There was the Sefiorita.”

He smiled wearily. “Ah, the Sefiorita; she is very well; a
man could love her, too. But we do not command love, my
friend.”

I interrupted him. “ I want to know why you brought me here.
Why did you ask me to come here when we were on board the
Thames?”

He answered sadly, “‘ Ah, then! Because I loved your sister,
and you reminded me always of her. But that is all over now—
done with for good. . . . I have to address myself to dying as it
becomes one of my race to die.” He smiled at me. “One must
die in peace to die like a Christian. Life has treated me rather
scurvily, only the gentleman must not repine like a poor man of low
birth. I would like to do a good turn to the friend who is the
brother of his sister, to the girl-cousin whom I do not love with
love, but whom I understand with affection—to the great inheri-
tance that is not for my wasted hands.”

I looked out of the open door of the room. There was the ab-
solutely quiet inner court of the palace, a colonnade of tall square -
pillars, in the center the little thread of a fountain. Round the
fountain were tangled bushes of flowers—enormous geraniums,
enormous hollyhocks, a riot of orange marigolds.

“ How like our flowers at home! ” I said mechanically.

“T brought the seeds from there—from your sister’s garden,” he
said.

PART SECOND 107

I felt horribly hipped. ‘ But all these things tell me nothing,”
I said, with an attempt towards briskness.

““T have to husband my voice.” He closed his eyes.

There is no saying that I did not believe him; I did, every word.
I had simply been influenced by Rooksby’s suspicions. I had made
an ass of myself over that business on board the Thames. ‘The
passage of Carlos and his faithful Tomas had been arranged for by
some agent of O’Brien in London, who was in communication with
Ramon and Rio Medio. The same man had engaged Nichols, that
Nova Scotian mate, an unscrupulous sailor, for O’Brien’s service.
He was to leave the ship in Kingston, and report himself to Ramon,
who furnished him with the means to go to Cuba. ‘That man,
seeing me intimate with two persons going to Rio Medio, had got
it into his head that I was going there, too. And, very nat-
urally, he did not want an Englishman for a witness of his
doings.

But Rooksby’s behavior, his veiled accusations, his innuendoes
against Carlos, had influenced me more than anything else. I remem-
bered a hundred little things now that I knew that Carlos loved
Veronica. I understood Rooksby’s jealous impatience, Veronica’s
friendly glances at Carlos, the fact that Rooksby had proposed to
Veronica on the very day that Carlos had come again into the neigh-
borhood with the runners after him. I saw very well that there
was no more connection between the Casa Riego and the rascality
of Rio Medio than there was between Ralph himself and old
drunken Rangsley on Hythe beach. There was less, perhaps. —

“ Ah, you have had a sad life, my Carlos,” I said, after a long
time.

He opened his eyes, and smiled his brave smile. ‘“‘ Ah, as to
that,” he said, ‘one kept on. One has to husband one’s voice,
though, and not waste it over lamentations. I have to tell you—
ah, yes. . . .”’ He paused and fixed his eyes upon me. “ Figure
to yourself that this house, this town, an immense part of this
island, much even yet in Castile itself, much gold, many slaves, a
great name—a very great name—are what I shall leave behind me.
Now think that there is a very noble old man, one who has been
very great in the world, who shall die very soon; then all these
things shall go to a young girl. That old man is very old, is a

108 ROMANCE

little foolish with age; that young girl knows very little of the
world, and is very passionate, very proud, very helpless.

“ Add, now, to that a great menace—a very dangerous, crafty,
subtle personage, who has the ear of that old man; whose aim it is
to become the possessor of that young girl and of that vast wealth.
The old man is much subject to the other. Old men are like that,
especially the very great. ‘They have many things to think of; it is
necessary that they rely on somebody. I am, in fact, speaking of
my uncle and the man called O’Brien. You have seen him.”
Carlos spoke in a voice hardly above a whisper, but he stuck to his
task with indomitable courage. ‘“‘ If I die and leave him here, he
will have my uncle to himself. He is a terrible man. Where would
all that great fortune go? For the re-establishing the true faith in
Ireland? Quien sabe? Into the hands of O’Brien, at any rate.
And the daughter, too—a young girl—she would be in the hands
of O’Brien, too. If I could expect to live, it might be different.
That is the greatest distress of all.” He swallowed painfully, and
put his frail hand on to the white ruffle at his neck. “I was in
great trouble to find how to thwart this O’Brien. My uncle
went to Kingston because he was persuaded it was his place to see
that the execution of those unhappy men was conducted with due
humanity. O’Brien came with us as his secretary. I was in the
greatest horror of mind. I prayed for guidance. ‘Then my eyes
fell upon you, who were pressed against our very carriage wheels.
It was like an answer to my prayers.”’ Carlos suddenly reached
out and caught my hand.

I thought he was wandering, and I was immensely sorry for him.
He looked at me so wistfully with his immense eyes. He continued
to press my hand.

“ But when I saw you,” he went on, after a time, “ it had come
into my head, ‘That is the man who is sent in answer to my .
prayers.’ I knew it, I say. If you could have my cousin and my
lands, I thought, it would be like my having your sister—not quite,
but good enough for a man who is to die in a short while, and leave
no trace but a marble tomb. Ah, one desires very much to leave
a mark under God’s blessed sun, and to be able to know a little how
‘things will go after one is dead. . . . I arranged the matter very
quickly in my mind. ‘There was the difficulty of O’Brien. If I

PART SECOND 109g

had said, ‘ Here is the man who is to marry my cousin,” he would
have had you or me murdered; he would stop at nothing. So I
said to him very quietly, ‘ Look here, Sefior Secretary, that is the
man you have need of to replace your Nichols—a devil to fight;
but I think he will not consent without a little persuasion.
Decoy him, then, to Ramon’s, and do your persuading.’ O’Brien
was very glad, because he thought that at last I was coming
to take an interest in his schemes, and because it was bringing
humiliation to an Englishman. And Seraphina was glad, be-
cause I had often spoken of you with enthusiasm, as very fearless
and very honorable. Then I made that man Ramon decoy you,
thinking that the matter would be left to me.”

That was what Carlos had expected. But O’Brien, talking with
Ramon, had heard me described as an extreme Separationist so
positively that he had thought it safe to open himself fully. He
must have counted, also, on my youth, my stupidity, or my want
of principle. Finding out his mistake, he very soon made up his
mind how to act; and Carlos, fearing that worse might befall me,
had let him.

But when the young girl had helped me to escape, Carlos, who
understood fully the very great risks I ran in going to Havana in
the ship that picked me up, had made use of O’Brien’s own pica-
roons to save me from him. ‘That was the story.

‘Towards the end his breath came fast and short; there was a
flush on his face; his eyes gazed imploringly at me.

“You will stay here, now, till I die, and then—I want you to
protect ” He fell back on the pillows.

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PART THIRD
CASA RIEGO
CHAPTER I

LL this is in my mind now, softened by distance, by the
tenderness of things remembered—the wonderful dawn of
life, with all the mystery and promise of the young day

breaking amongst heavy thunder-clouds. At the time I was over-
whelmed—I can’t express it otherwise. I felt like a man thrown
out to sink or swim, trying to keep his head above water. Of
course, I did not suspect Carlos now; I was ashamed of ever having
done so. I had long ago forgiven him his methods. “In a great
need, you must,” he had said, looking at me anxiously, “ recur to
desperate remedies.” And he was going to die. I had made no
answer, and only hung my head—not in resentment, but in doubt
of my strength to bear the burden of the great trust that this man
whom I loved for his gayety, his recklessness and romance, was
going to leave in my inexperienced hands.

He had talked till, at last exhausted, he sank back gently on the
pillows of the enormous bed emblazoned like a monument. I went
out, following a gray-headed negro, and the nun glided in, and
stood at the foot with her white hands folded patiently.

“ Seftor!” I heard her mutter reproachfully to the invalid.

“Do not scold a poor sinner, Dofia Maria,” he addressed her
feebly, with valiant jocularity. “The days are not many now.”

The strangeness and tremendousness of what was happening
came over me very strongly whilst, in a large chamber with barred
loopholes, I was throwing off the rags in which I had entered this
house. The night had come already, and I was putting on some
of Carlos’ clothes by the many flames of candles burning in a tall
bronze candelabrum, whose three legs figured the paws of a lion.
And never, since I had gone on the road to wait for the smugglers,

Iit

112 ROMANCE

and be choked by the Bow Street runners, had I remembered so
well the house in which I was born. It was as if, till then, I had
never felt the need to look back. But now, like something roman-
tic and glamourous, there came before me Veronica’s sweet, dim
face, my mother’s severe and resolute countenance. I had need of
all her resoluteness now. And I remembered the figure of my
father in the big chair by the ingle, powerless and lost in his search
for rhymes. He might have understood the romance of my situ-
ation.

It grew upon me as I thought. Don Balthasar, I understood,
was apprised of my arrival. As in a dream, I. followed the old
negro, who had returned to the door of my room. It grew upon
me in the silence of this colonnaded court. We walked along the
upper gallery; his cane tapped before me on the tesselated pavement ;
below, the water splashed in the marble basins; glass lanthorns
hung glimmering between the pillars and, in wrought silver frames,
lighted the broad white staircase. Under the inner curve of the
vaulted gateway a black-faced man on guard, with a bell-mouthed
gun, rose from a stool at our passing. I thought I saw Castro’s
peaked hat and large cloak flit in the gloom into which fell the
light from the small doorway of a sort of guardroom near the
closed gate. We continued along the arcaded walk; a double
curtain was drawn to right and left before me, while my guide
stepped aside.

In a vast white apartment three black figures stood about a
central glitter of crystal and silver. At once the aged, slightly
mechanical voice of Don Balthasar rose thinly, putting himself and
his house at my disposition.

The formality of movement, of voices, governed and checked the
unbounded emotions of my wonder. The two ladies sank, with a
rustle of starch and stiff silks, in answer to my profound bow. I
had just enough control over myself to accomplish that, but men-
tally I was out of breath; and when I felt the slight, trembling
touch of Don Balthasar’s hand resting on my inclined head, it was
as if I had suddenly become aware for a moment of the earth’s
motion. The hand was gone; his face was averted, and a corpulent
priest, all straight and black below his rosy round face, had stepped
forward to say a Latin grace in solemn tones that wheezed a little.

PART THIRD 113

As soon as he had done he withdrew with a.circular bow to the
ladies, to Don Balthasar, who inclined his silvery head. His life-
less voice propounded:

“Our excellent Father Antonio, in his devotion, dines by the
bedside of our beloved Carlos.” He sighed. The heavy carvings
of his chair rose upright at his back; he sat with his head leaning
forward over his silver plate. A heavy silence fell. Death hovered
over that table—and also, as if the breath of past ages. The mul-
titude of lights, the polished floor of costly wood, the bare white-
ness of walls wainscoted with marble, the vastness of the room,
the imposing forms of furniture, carved heavily in ebony, impressed
me with a sense of secular and austere magnificence. For cen-
turies there had always been a Riego living in this fortress-like
palace, ruling this portion of the New World with the whole maj-
esty of his race. And I thought of the long, loop-holed, buttressed
walls that this abode of noble adventurers presented foursquare to
the night outside, standing there by the seashore like a tomb of
warlike glories. ‘They built their houses thus, centuries ago, when
the bands of buccaneers, indomitable and atrocious, had haunted
their conquest with a reminder of mortality and weakness.

It was a tremendous thing for me, this dinner. ‘The portly
duenna on my left had a round eye and an irritated, parrot-like
profile, crowned by a high comb, a head shaded by black lace. I
dared hardly lift my eyes to the dark and radiant presence facing
me across a table furniture that was like a display of treasure.

But I did look. She was the girl of the lizard, the girl of the

. dagger, and, in the solemnity of the silence, she was like a fabulous
apparition from a half-forgotten tale. I watched covertly the
youthful grace of her features. “The curve of her cheek filled me
with delight. From time to time she shook the heavy clusters of
her curls, and I was amazed, as though I had never before seen a
woman’s hair. Each parting of her lips was a distinct anticipation
of a great felicity; when she said a few words to me, I felt an
inward trembling. They were indifferent words.

Had she forgotten she was the girl with the dagger? And the
old Don? What did that old man know? What did he think?
What did he mean by that touch of a blessing on my head? Did
he know how I had come to his house? But every turn of her head

114 ROMANCE

troubled my thoughts. The movements of her hands made me
forget myself. The gravity of her eyes above the smile of her lips
suggested ideas of adoration.

We were served noiselessly. A battalion of young lusty negroes,
in blue jackets laced with silver, walked about barefooted under
the command of the old major-domo. He, alone, had white silk
stockings, and shoes with silver buckles; his wide-skirted maroon
velvet coat, with gold on the collar and cuffs, hung low about his
thin shanks; and, with a long ebony staff in his hand, he directed
the service from behind Don Balthasar’s chair. At times he bent
towards his master’s ear. Don Balthasar answered with a mur-
mur: and those two faces brought close together, one like a noble
ivory carving, the other black with the mute pathos of the African
faces, seemed to commune in a fellowship of age, of things far off,
remembered, lived through together. There was something mys-
terious and touching in this violent contrast, toned down by the
near approach to the tomb—the brotherhood of master and slave.

At a given moment an enormous iron key was brought in on a
silver salver, and, bending over the chair, the gray-headed negro
laid it by Don Balthasar’s plate.

“Don Carlos’ orders,” he muttered.

The old Don seemed to wake up; a little color mounted to his
cheeks.

“There was a time, young caballero, when the gates of Casa
Riego stood open night and day to the griefs and poverty of the
people, like the doors of a church—and as respected. But now it
seems ...”

He mumbled a little peevishly, but seemed to recollect himself.
“The safety of his guest is like the breath of life to a Castilian,”
he ended, with a benignant but attentive look at me.

He rose, and we passed out through the double lines of the ser-
vants ranged from table to door. By the splash of the fountain,
on a little round table between two chairs, stood a many-branched
candlestick. ‘The duenna sat down opposite Don Balthasar. A
multitude of stars was suspended over the breathless peace of the
court.

“Sefiorita,’” I began, mustering all my courage, and all my
Spanish, “I do not know af

PART THIRD 115

She was walking by my side with upright carriage and a noncha-
lant step, and shut her fan smartly.

“Don Carlos himself had given me the dagger,” she said
rapidly.

The fan flew open; a touch of the wind fanning her person came
faintly upon my cheek with a suggestion of delicate perfume.

She noticed my confusion, and said, “ Let us walk to the end,
sefior.”

The old man and the duenna had cards in their hands now. The
intimate tone of her words ravished me into the seventh heaven.

“Ah,” she said, when we were out of ear-shot, “I have the
spirit of my house; but I am only a weak girl. We have taken
this resolution because of your hidalguidad, because you are our
kinsman, because you are English. Ay de mi! Would I had been
a man. My father needs a son in his great, great age. Poor
father! Poor Don Carlos!”

There was the catch of a sob in the shadow of the end gallery.
We turned back, and the undulation of her walk seemed to throw
me into a state of exaltation.

“On the word of an Englishman ” T began.

The fan touched my arm. ‘The eyes of the duenna glittered over
the cards.

“This woman belongs to that man, too,” muttered Seraphina.
“ And yet she used to be faithful—almost a mother. Misericordia!
Sefior, there is no one in this unhappy place that he has not bought,
corrupted, frightened, or bent to his will—to his madness of hate
against England. Of our poor he has made a rabble. The bishop
himself is afraid.”

Such was the beginning of our first conversation in this court
suggesting the cloistered peace of a convent. We strolled to and
fro; she dropped her eyelids, and the agitation of her mind, pic-
tured in the almost fierce swiftness of her utterance, made a won-
derful contrast to the leisurely rhythm of her movements, marked
by the slow beating of the fan. The retirement of her father from
. the world after her mother’s death had made a great solitude round
his declining years. Yes, that sorrow, and the base intrigues of
that man—a fugitive, a hanger-on of her mother’s family—recom-
mended to Don Balthasar’s grace by her mother’s favor. Yes! He

116 ROMANCE .

had, before she died, thrown his baneful influence even upon that
saintly spirit, by the piety of his practices and these sufferings for
his faith he always paraded. His faith! Oh, hypocrite, hypocrite,
hypocrite! His only faith was hate—the hate of England. He
would sacrifice everything to it. He would despoil and ruin his
greatest benefactors, this fatal man!

“ Sefior, my cousin,” she said picturesquely, “he would, if he
could, drop poison into every spring of clear water in your country.

Smile, Don Juan.”

Her repressed vehemence had held me spellbound, and the silvery
little burst of laughter ending her fierce tirade had the bewildering
effect of a crash on my mind. ‘The other two looked up from their
cards.

“T pretend to laugh to deceive that woman,” she explained
quickly. “I used to love her.”

She had no one now about her she could trust or love. It was
as if the whole world were blind to the nefarious nature of that
man. He had possessed himself of her little father’s mind. I
glanced towards the old Don, who at that moment was brokenly
taking a pinch of snuff out of a gold snuff-box, while the
duenna, very sallow and upright, waited, frowning loftily at her
cards. .

“Tt seemed as if nothing could restrain that man,’’ Seraphina’s
voice went on by my side, “neither fear nor gratitude.” He
seemed to cast a spell upon people. He was the plenipotentiary of
a powerful religious order—no matter. Don Carlos knew these
things better than she did. He had the ear of the Captain-General
through that. ‘Sh! But the intrigues, the intrigues!” I saw
her little hand clenched on the closed fan. There were no bounds
to his audacity. He wasted their wealth. ‘“‘ The audacity!” He
had overawed her father’s mind; he claimed descent from his
Irish kings, he who “Sefior, my English cousin, he even
dares aspire to my person.”

‘The game of cards was over.

“ Death rather,” she let fall in a whisper of calm resolution.

She dropped me a deep courtesy. Servants were ranging them-
selves in a row, holding upright before their black faces wax lights
in tall silver candlesticks inherited from the second Viceroy of

PART THIRD 117

Mexico. I bowed profoundly, with indignation on her behalf and
horror in my breast; and, turning away from me, she sank low,
bending her head to receive her father’s blessing. The major-domo
preceded the cortege. ‘The two women moved away with an ample
rustling of silk, and with lights carried on each side of their black,
stiff figures. Before they had disappeared up the wide staircase,
Don Balthasar, who had stood perfectly motionless with his old
face over his snuff-box, seemed to wake up, and made in the air a
hasty sign of the cross after his daughter.

They appeared again in the upper gallery between the columns.
I saw her head, draped in lace, carried proudly, with the white
flower in her hair. I raised my eyes. All my being seemed to
strive upwards in that glance. Had she turned her face my way
just a little? Illusion! And the double door above closed with
an echoing sound along the empty galleries. She had disap-
peared.

Don Balthasar took three turns in the courtyard, no more. It
was evidently a daily custom. When he withdrew his hand from
my arm to tap his snuff-box, we stood still till he was ready to slip
it in again. ‘This was the strangest part of it, the most touching,
the most startling—that he should lean like this on me, as if he had
done it for years. Before me there must have been somebody else.
Carlos? Carlos, no doubt. And in this placing me in that position

there was apparent the work of death, the work of life, of time, the
pathetic realization of an inevitable destiny. He talked a little
disjointedly, with the uncertain swaying of a shadow on his
thoughts, as if the light of his mind had flickered like an expiring
lamp. I remember that once he asked me, in a sort of senile worry,
whether I had ever heard of an Irish king called Brian Boru;
but he did not seem to attach any importance to my reply,
and spoke no more till he said good-night at the door of my
chamber.

He went on to his apartments, surrounded by lights and pre-
ceded by his major-domo, who walked as bowed with age as him-
self; but the African had a firmer step.

I watched him go; there was about his progress in state some-
thing ghostlike and royal, an old-time, decayed majesty. It was as
if he had arisen before me after a hundred years’ sleep in his retreat

118 ROMANCE

—that man who, in his wild and passionate youth, had endangered
the wealth of the Riegos, had been the idol of the Madrid populace,
and a source of dismay to his family. He had carried away, vi et
armis, a nun from a convent, incurring the enmity of the Church
and the displeasure of his sovereign. He had sacrificed all his
fortune in Europe to the service of his king, had fought against the
French, had a price put upon his head by a special proclamation.
He had known passion, power, war, exile, and love. He had been
thanked by his returned king, honored for his wisdom, and
crushed with sorrow by the death of his young wife—Seraphina’s
mother.

What a life! And what was my arm—my arm on which he had
leaned in his decay? I looked at it with a sort of surprise,
dubiously. What was expected of it? I asked myself. Would it
have the strength? Ah, let her only lean on it!

It seemed to me that I would have the power to shake down
heavy pillars of stone, like Samson, in her service; to reach up and
take the stars, one by one, to lay at her feet. I heard a sigh. A
shadow appeared in the gallery.

The door of my room was open. Leaning my back against the
balustrade, I saw the black figure of the Father Antonio, mutter-
ing over his breviary, enter the space of the light.

He crossed himself, and stopped with a friendly, ‘“ You are
taking the air, my son. The night is warm.” He was rubicund,
and his little eyes looked me over with priestly mansuetude.

I said it was warm indeed. I liked him instinctively.

He lifted his eyes to the starry sky. ‘“‘ The orbs are shining
excessively,” he said; then added, “To the greater glory of God.
One is never tired of contemplating this sublime spectacle.”

“ How is Don Carlos, your reverence?” I asked.

““My beloved penitent sleeps,” he answered, peering at me
benevolently ; “ he reposes. Do you know, young caballero, that I
have been a prisoner of war in your country, and am acquainted
with Londres? I was chaplain of the ship San José at the battle of
Trafalgar. On my soul, it is, indeed, a blessed, fertile country, full
of beauty and of well-disposed hearts. I have never failed since
to say every day an especial prayer for its return to our holy mother,
the Church. Because I love it.”

PART THIRD 11g

I said nothing to this, only bowing; and he laid a short, thick
hand on my shoulder.

“ May your coming amongst us, my son, bring calmness to a
Christian soul too much troubled with the affairs of this world.”
He sighed, nodded to me with a friendly, sad smile, and began to
mutter his prayers as he went.

CHAPTER II

ON BALTHASAR accepted my presence without a

question. Perhaps he fancied he had invited me; of my

manner of coming he was ignorant, of course. O’Brien,
who had gone on to Havana in the ship which had landed the
Riegos in Rio Medio, gave no sign of life. And yet, on the arrival
of the Breeze, he must have found out I was no longer on board.
I forgot the danger suspended over my head. For a fortnight I
lived as if in a dream.

“What is the action you want me to take, Carlos?” I asked one
day.

Propped up with pillows, he looked at me with the dig eyes of
his emaciation.

“T would like best to see you marry my cousin. Once before
a woman of our race had married an Englishman. She had been
happy. English things last forever—English peace, English power,
English fidelity. It is a country of much serenity, of order, ot
stable affection. . . .”

His voice was very weak and full of faith. I remained silent,
overwhelmed at this secret of my innermost heart, voiced by his
bloodless lips—as if a dream had come to pass, as if a miracle had
taken place. He added, with an indefinable smile of an almost
unearthly wistfulness:

““T would have married your sister, my Juan.”

He had on him the glamour of things English—of English power
emerging from the dust of wars and revolution; of England stable
and undismayed, like a strong man who had kept his feet in the -
tottering of secular edifices shaken to their foundations by an earth-
quake. It was as if for him that were something fine, something
romantic, just as for me. Romance had always seemed to be
embodied in his features, in his glance, and to live in the air he
breathed. On the other side of the bed the old Don, lost in a high-
backed armchair, remained plunged in that meditation of the old

120

PART THIRD 121

which resembles sleep, as sleep resembles death. The priest, lighted
up by the narrow, bright streak of the window, was reading his
breviary through a pair of enormous spectacles. The white coif of
the nun hovered in distant corners of the room.

We were constantly talking of O’Brien. He was the only
subject of all our conversations; and when Carlos inveighed against
the Intendente, the old Don nodded sadly in his chair. He was
dishonoring the name of the Riegos, Carlos would exclaim feebly,
turning his head towards his uncle. His uncle’s own province, the
name of his own town, stood for a refuge of the scum of the An-
tilles. It was a shameful sanctuary. Every ruffian, rascal, mur-
derer, and thief of the West Indies had come to think of this
ancient and honorable town as a safe haven.

I myself could very well remember the Jamaica household ex-
pression, “ The Rio Medio piracies,” and all these paragraphs in
the home papers that reached us a month old, headed, “‘ The Ac-
tivity of the So-called Mexican Privateers,’ and urging upon our
Government the necessity of energetic remonstrances in Madrid.
“The fact, incredible as it may appear,” said the writers, “‘seeming
to be that the nest of these Picaroons is actually within the loyal
dominions of the Spanish Crown.” If Spain, our press said, re-.
sented our recognition of South American independence, let it do
so openly, not by countenancing criminals. It was unworthy of a
great nation. ‘‘ Our West Indian trade is being stabbed in the
back,” declaimed the Bristol Mirror. ‘‘ Where is our fleet?” it
asked. ‘‘ If the Cuban authorities are unable or unwilling, let us
take the matter in our own hands.”

There was a great deal of mystery about this peculiar outbreak
of lawlessness that seemed to be directed so pointedly against the
British trade. The town of Rio Medio was alluded to as one of
the unapproachable towns of the earth—closed, like the capital of
Prester John to the travelers, or Mecca to the infidels. Nobody
I ever met in Jamaica had set eyes on the place. The impression
prevailed that no stranger could come out of it alive. Incredible
stories were told of it in the island, and indignation at its existence
grew at home and in the colonies.

Admiral Rowley, an old fighter, grown a bit lazy, no diplomatist
(the stories of his being venial, I take it, were simply abominable

122 ROMANCE

calumnies), unable to get anything out of the Cuban authorities
but promises and lofty protestations, had made up his mind, under
direct pressure from home, to take matters into his own hands. His
boat attack had been a half-and-half affair, for all that. He in-
tended, he had said, to go to the bottom of the thing, and find out
what there was in the place; but he could not believe that anybody
would dare offer resistance to the boats of an English squadron.
They were sent in as if for an exploration rather than for an armed
landing.

It ended in a disaster, and a sense. of wonder had been added to
the mystery of the fabulous Rio Medio organization. The Cuban
authorities protested against the warlike operations attempted in a
friendly country; at the same time, they had delivered the seven
pirates—the men whom I saw hanged in Kingston. And Rowley
was recalled home in disgrace.

It was my extraordinary fate to penetrate into this holy city of
the last organized piracy the world would ever know. I beheld it
with my eyes; I had stood on the point behind the very battery of
guns which had swept Rowley’s boats out of existence.

The narrow entrance faced, across the water, the great portal
of the cathedral. Rio Medio had been a place of some splendor in
its time. The ruinous heavy buildings clung to the hillsides, and
my eyes plunged into a broad vista of an empty and magnificent
street. Behind many of the imposing and escutcheoned frontages
there was nothing but heaps of rubble; the footsteps of rare passers-
by woke lonely echoes, and strips of grass outlined in parallelograms
the flagstones of the roadway. The Casa Riego raised its but-
tressed and loop-holed bulk near the shore, resembling a defensive
outwork; on my other hand the shallow bay, vast, placid, and
shining, extended itself behind the strip of coast like an enormous
lagoon. The fronds of palm-clusters dotted the beach over the
glassy shimmer of the far distance. The dark and wooded slopes
of the hills closed the view inland on every side.

Under the palms the green masses of vegetation concealed the
hovels of the rabble. There were three so-called villages at the
bottom of the bay; and that good Catholic and terrible man, Sefior
Juez O’Brien, could with a simple nod send every man in them to
the gallows.

PART THIRD 123

The respectable population of Rio Medio, leading a cloistered
existence in the ruins of old splendor, used to call that thievish
rabble Lugaretos—villagers. They were sea-thieves, but they
were dangerous.

At night, from these clusters of hovels surrounded by the banana
plantations, there issued a villainous noise, the humming of hived
scoundrels, Lights twinkled. One could hear the thin twanging
of guitars, uproarious songs, all the sounds of their drinking, sing-
ing, gambling, quarreling, love-making, squalor. Sometimes the
long shriek of a woman rent the air, or shouting tumults rose and
subsided; while, on the other side of the cathedral, the houses of
the past, the houses without life, showed no light and made no
sound.

There would be no strollers on the beach in the daytime; the
masts of the two schooners (bought in the United States by
O’Brien to make war with on the British Empire) appeared like
slender sticks far away up the empty stretch of water; and that
gathering of rufhians, thieves, murderers, and runaway slaves slept
in their noisome dens. ‘Their habits were obscene and nocturnal.
Cruel without hardihood, and greedy without courage, they were
no skull-and-crossbones pirates of the old kind, that, under the
black flag, neither gave nor expected quarter. Their usual prac-
tice was to hang in rowboats round some unfortunate ship be-
calmed in sight of their coast, like a troop of vultures hopping about
the carcass of a dead buffalo on a plain. When they judged the
thing was fairly safe, they would attack with a great noise and
show of ferocity; do some hasty looting amongst the cargo; break
into the cabins for watches, wearing apparel, and so on; perpetrate
at times some atrocity, such as singeing the soles of some poor
devil of a ship-master, when they had positive information (from
such affiliated helpers as Ramon, the storekeeper in Jamaica) that
there was coined money concealed on board; and take themselves
off to their sordid revels on shore, and to hold auctions of looted
property on the beach. ‘These were attended by people from the
interior of the province, and now and then even the Havana dealers
would come on the quiet to secure a few pieces of silk or a cask
or two of French wine. ‘Tomas Castro could not mention them
without spitting in sign of contempt. And it was with that base

124 ROMANCE

crew that O’Brien imagined himself to be making war on the
British Empire!

In the time of Nichols it did look as if they were really becoming
enterprising. "They had actually chased and boarded ships sixty
miles out at sea. It seems he had inspired them with audacity by
means of kicks, blows, and threats of instant death, after the
manner of Bluenose sailors. His long limbs, the cadaverous and
menacing aspect, the strange nasal ferocity of tone, something
mocking and desperate in his aspect, had persuaded them that this
unique sort of heretic was literally in league with the devil. He
had been the most efficient of the successive leaders O’Brien had
imported to give some sort of effect to his warlike operations. I
laugh and wonder as I write these words; but the man did look
upon it as a war and nothing else. What he had had the audacity
to propose to me had been treason, not thieving. It had a glamour
for him which, he supposed, a Separationist (as I had the reputa-
tion of being) could not fail to see. He was thinking of enlarging
his activity, of getting really in touch with the Mexican Junta of
rebels. As he had said, he needed a gentleman now. ‘These were
Carlos’ surmises.

Before Nichols there had been a rather bloodthirsty Frenchman,
but he got himself stabbed in an aguardiente shop for blaspheming
the Virgin. Nichols, as far as I could understand, had really
grown scared at O’Brien’s success in repulsing Rowley’s boats; he
had mysteriously disappeared, and neither of the two schooners
had been out till the day of my kidnaping, when Castro, by order
of Carlos, had taken the command.~ The freebooters of Rio Medio
had returned to their cautious and petty pilfering in boats, from
such unlucky ships as thé chance of the weather had delivered into
their hands. I heard, also, during my walks with Castro (he
attended me wrapped in his cloak, and with two pistols in his belt),
that there were great jealousies and bickerings amongst that base
populace. They were divided into two parties. For instance, the
rascals living in the easternmost village accepted tacitly the leader-
ship of a certain Domingo, a mulatto, keeper of a vile grogshop,
who was skilled in the art of throwing a knife to a great distance.
Manuel-del-Popolo, the extraordinary improvisador with the gui-
tar, was an aspirant for power with a certain following of his own.

PART THIRD 125

Words could not express Castro’s scorn for these fellows. La-
drones! vermin of the earth, scum of the sea, he called them.

His position, of course, was exceptional. A dependent of the
Riegos, a familiar of the Casa, he was infinitely removed from a
Domingo or a Manuel. He lived soberly, like a Spaniard, in some
hut in the nearest of the villages, with an old woman who swept
the earth floor and cooked his food at an outside fire—his puchero
and ¢ortillas—and rolled for him his provision of cigarettes for the
day. Every morning he marched up to the Casa, like a courtier, to
attend on his king. I never saw him eat or drink anything there.
He leaned a shoulder against the wall, or sat on the floor of the
gallery with his short legs stretched out near the big mahogany door
of Carlos’ room, with many cigarettes stuck behind his ears and in
the band of his hat. When these were gone he grubbed for more
in the depths of his clothing, somewhere near his skin. Puffs of
smoke issued from his pursed lips; and the desolation of his pose,
the sorrow of his round, wrinkled face, was so great that it seemed
were he to cease smoking, he would die of grief.

The general effect of the place was of vitality exhausted, of a
body calcined, of romance turned into stone. ‘The still air, the hot
sunshine, the white beach curving around the deserted sheet of
water, the somber green of the hills, had the motionlessness of
things petrified, the vividness of things painted, the sadness of
things abandoned, desecrated. And, as if alone intrusted with the
guardianship of life’s sacred fire, I was moving amongst them,
nursing my love for Seraphina. ‘The words of Carlos were like
oil upon a flame; it enveloped me from head to foot with a leap.
I had the physical sensation of breathing it, of seeing it, of being at
the same time driven on and restrained. One moment I strode
blindly over the sand, the next I stood still; and Castro, coming up
panting, would remark from behind that, on such a hot day as this,
it was a shame to disturb even a dog sleeping in the shade. I had
the feeling of absolute absorption into one idea. I was ravaged by
a thought. It was as if I had never before imagined, heard spoken
of, or seen a woman.

It was true. She was a revelation to my eye and my ear, as much
as to my heart and mind. Indeed, I seemed never before to have
seen a woman. Whom had I seen? Veronica? We had been too

126 ROMANCE

poor, and my mother too proud, to keep up a social intercourse with
our neighbors; the village girls had been devoid of even the most
rustic kind of charm; the people were too poor to be handsome. I
had never been tempted to look at a woman’s face; and the manner
of my going from home is known. In Jamaica, sharing with an
exaggerated loyalty the unpopularity of the Macdonalds, I had led
a lonely life; for I had no taste for their friends’ society, and
the others, after a time, would have nothing to do with me. I had
made a sort of hermitage for myself out of a house in a distant
plantation, and sometimes I should see no white face for whole
weeks together. She was the first woman to me—a strange new
being, a marvel as great as Eve herself to Adam’s wondering
awakening.

It may be that a close intimacy stands in the way of love spring-
ing up between two young people, but in our case it was different.
My passion seemed to spring from our understanding, because
the understanding was in the face of danger. We were like two
people in a slowly sinking ship; the feeling of the abyss under our
feet was our bond, not the real comprehension of each other.
Apart from that, she remained to me always unattainable and ro-
mantic—unique, with all the unexpressed promises of love such as
no world had ever known. And naturally, because for me, hitherto,
the world had held no woman. She was an apparition of dreams
—the girl with the lizard, the girl with the dagger, a wonder to
stretch out my hands to from afar; and yet I was permitted to
whisper intimately to this my dream, to this vision. We had to
put our heads close together, talking of the enemy and of the
shadow over the house; while under our eyes Carlos waited for
death, made cruel by his anxieties, and the old Don walked in the
darkness of his accumulated years.

As to me, what was I to her?

Carlos, in a weak voice, and holding her hand with a feeble and
tenacious grasp, had told her repeatedly that the English cousin
was ready to offer up his life to her happiness in this world. Many
a time she would turn her glance upon me—not a grateful glance,
but, as it were, searching and pensive—a glance of penetrating
candor, a young girl’s glance, that, by its very trustfulness, seems
to look one through and through. And then the sense of my un-

PART THIRD 127

worthiness made me long for her love as a sinner, in his weakness,
longs for the saving grace.

“ Our English cousin is worthy of his great nation. He is very
brave, and very chivalrous to a poor girl,” she would say softly.

One day, I remember, going out of Carlos’ room, she had just
paused on the threshold for an almost imperceptible moment, the
time to murmur, with feeling, ““ May Heaven reward you, Don
Juan.” This sound, faint and enchanting, like a breath of sweet
wind, staggered me. Castro, sitting outside as usual, had scrambled
to his feet and stood by, hat in hand, his head bent slightly with
saturnine deference. She smiled at him. I think she felt kindly
towards the tubby little bandit of a fellow. After all, there was
something touching and pathetic in his mournful vigil at the door
of our radiant Carlos. I could have embraced that figure of gro-
tesque and truculent devotion. Had she not smiled upon him?

The rest of that memorable day I spent in a state of delightful
distraction, as if I had been ravished into the seventh heaven, and
feared to be cast out again presently, as my unworthiness deserved.
What if it were possible, after all?—this, what Carlos wished,
what he had said. The heavens shook; the constellations above the
court of Casa Riego trembled at the thought.

Carlos fought valiantly. ‘There were days when his courage
seemed to drive the grim presence out of the chamber, where
Father Antonio with his breviary, and the white coif of the nun,
seemed the only reminders of illness and mortality. Sometimes his
voice was very strong, and a sort of hopefulness lighted his wasted
features. Don Balthasar paid many visits to his nephew in the
course of each day. He sat apparently attentive, and nodding at
the name of O’Brien. Then Carlos would talk against O’Brien
from amongst his pillows as if inspired, till the old man, striking
the floor with his gold-headed cane, would exclaim, in a quavering
voice, that he, alone, had made him, had raised him up from the
dust, and could abase him to the dust again. He would instantly
go to Havana; orders would be given to Cesar for the journey this
very moment. He would then take a pinch of snuff with shaky
energy, and lean back in the armchair. Carlos would whisper to
me, ‘“‘ He will never leave the Casa again,” and an air of solemn,
brooding helplessness would fall upon the funereal magnificence of

128 ROMANCE

the room. Presently we should hear the old Don muttering dot-
ingly to himself the name of Seraphina’s mother, the young wife
of his old days, so saintly, and snatched away from him in punish-
ment of his early sinfulness. It was impossible that she should
have been deceived in Don Patricio (O’Brien’s Christian name was
Patrick). The intendente was a man of great intelligence, and full
of reverence for her memory. Don Balthasar admitted that he
himself was growing old; and, besides, there was that sorrow of
his life. . . . He had been fortunate in his affliction to have a
man of his worth by his side. There might have been slight irregu-
larities, faults of youth (O’Brien was five-and-forty if a day).
The archbishop himself was edified by the life of the upright judge
—all Havana, all the island. ‘The intendente’s great zeal for the
House might have led him into an indiscretion or two. So many
years now, so many years. A noble himself. Had we heard of an
Irish king? Aking ... king . . . hecould not recall the name
at present. It might be well to hear what a man of such abilities
had to say for himself.

Carlos and I looked at each other silently.

“ And his life hangs on a thread,” whispered the dying man
with something like despair.

The crisis of all these years of plotting would come the moment
the old Don closed his eyes. Meantime, why was it that O’Brien
did not show himself in Rio Medio? What was it that kept him
in Havana?

“Already I do not count, my Juan,” Carlos would say. “ And
he prepares all things for the day of my uncle’s death.”

The dark ways of that man were inscrutable. He must have
known, of course, that I was in Rio Medio. His presence was to
be feared, and his absence itself was growing formidable. °

“ But what do you think he will do? How do you think he will ~
act?” I would ask, a little bewildered by my responsibility.

Carlos could not tell precisely. It was not till some time after
his arrival from Europe that he became clearly aware of all the
extent of that man’s ambition. At the same time, he had realized
all his power. That man aimed at nothing less than the whole
Riego fortune, and, of course, through Seraphina. I would feel
a rage at this—a ‘sort of rage that made my head spin as if the

PART THIRD 129

ground had reeled. ‘“‘ He would have found means of getting rid
of me if he had not seen I was not long for this world,” Carlos
would say. He had gained an unlimited ascendency over his uncle’s
mind; he had made a solitude round this solemn dotage in which
ended so much power, a great reputation, a stormy life of romance
and passion—so picturesque and excessive even in his old man’s
love, whose after-effect, as though the work of a Nemesis resenting
so much brilliance, was casting a shadow upon the fate of his
daughter.

Small, fair, plump, concealing his Irish vivacity of intelligence
_under the taciturn gravity of a Spanish lawyer, and backed by the
influence of two noble houses, O’Brien had attained to a remark-
able reputation of sagacity and unstained honesty. Hand in
glove with the clergy, one of the judges of the Marine Court, pro-
curator to the cathedral chapter, he had known how to make him-
self so necessary to the highest in the land that everybody but the
very highest looked upon him with fear. His occult influence was
altogether out of proportion to his official position. His plans
were carried out with an unswerving tenacity of purpose. Carlos
believed him capable of anything but a vulgar peculation. He had
been reduced to observe his action quietly, hampered by the weak-
ness of ill-health. As an instance of O’Brien’s methods, he related
to me the manner in which, faithful to his purpose of making a soli-
tude about the Riegos, he had contrived to prevent overtures for
an alliance from the Salazar family. The young man Don Vin-
cente himself was impossible, an evil liver, Carlos said, of dissolute
habits. Still, to have even that shadow of a rival out of the way,
O’Brien took advantage of a sanguinary affray between that man
and one of his boon companions about some famous guitar-player
girl. The encounter having taken place under the wall of a con-
vent, O’Brien had contrived to keep Don Vincente in prison ever
since—not on a charge of murder (which for a young man of that
quality would have been a comparatively venial offense), but of
sacrilege. The Salazars were a powerful family, but he was strong
enough to risk their enmity. ‘‘ Imagine that, Juan!” Carlos would
exclaim, closing his eyes. What had caused him the greatest un-
easiness was the knowledge that Don Balthasar had been induced
lately to write some letter to the archbishop in Havana. Carlos

130 ROMANCE

was afraid it was simply an expression of affection and unbounded
trust in his intendente, practically dictated to the old man by
O’Brien. “Do you not see, Juan, how such a letter would
strengthen his case, should he ask the guardians for Seraphina’s
hand?” And perhaps he was appointed one of the guardians him-
self. It was impossible to know what were the testamentary dis-
positions; Father Antonio, who had learned many things in the
confessional, could tell us nothing, but, when the matter was men-
tioned, only rolled his eyes up to heaven in an alarming manner.
It was startling to think of all the unholy forces awakened by the
temptation of Seraphina’s helplessness and her immense fortune.
Incorruptible himself, that man knew how to corrupt others.
There might have been combined in one dark intrigue the covetous-
ness of religious orders, the avarice of high officials—God knows
what conspiracy—to help O’Brien’s ambition, his passions. He
could make himself necessary; he could bribe; he could frighten;
he was able to make use of the highest in the land and of the low-
est, from the present Captain-General to the Lugarefios. In Ha-
vana he had for him the reigning powers; in Rio Medio the lowest
outcasts of the island.

This last was the most dangerous aspect of his power for us, and
also his weakest point. ‘This was the touch of something fanciful
and imaginative; a certain grim childishness in the idea of making
war on the British Empire; a certain disregard of risk; a bizarre
illusion of his hate for the abhorred Saxon. That he risked his
position by his connection with such a nest of scoundrels, there
could be no doubt. It was he who had given them such organiza-
tion as they had, and he stood between them and the law. But
whatever might have been suspected of him, he was cautious enough
not to go too far. He never appeared personally; his agents di-
rected the action—men who came from Havana rather mysteri-
ously. “They were of all sorts; some of them were friars. But the
rabble, who knew him really only as the intendente of the great
man, stood in the greatest dread of him. Who was it procured the
release of some of them who had got into trouble in Havana? The
intendente. Who was it who caused six of their comrades, who
had been taken up on a matter of street-brawling in the capital, to
be delivered to the English as pirates? Again, the intendente, the

PART THIRD ea

terrible man, the Juez, who apparently had the power to pardon
and condemn.

In this way he was most dangerous to us in Rio Medio. He had
that rabble at his beck and call. He could produce a rising of
cut-throats by lifting his little finger. He was not very likely to
do that, however. He was intriguing in Havana—but how could
we unmask him there? ‘“ He has cut us off from the world,”
Carlos would say. ‘It is so, my Juan, that, if I tried to write, no
letter of mine would reach its destination; it would fall into his
hands. And if I did manage to make my voice heard, he would
appeal to my uncle himself in his defense.”

Besides, to whom could he write?—who would believe him?
O’Brien would deny everything, and go on his way. He had been
accepted too long, had served too many people and known so many
secrets. It was terrible. And if I went myself to Havana, no one
would believe me. But I should disappear; they would never see
me again. It was impossible to unmask that man unless by a long
and careful action. And for this he—Carlos—had no time; and
I—I had no standing, no relations, no skill even. . . .

“ But what is my line of conduct, Carlos?” I insisted; while
Father Antonio, from whom Carlos had, of course, no secrets,
stood by the bed, his round, jolly face almost comical in its expres-
sion of compassionate concern.
~ Carlos passed his thin, wasted hand over a white brow pearled
with the sweat of real anguish.

Carlos thought that while Don Balthasar lived, O’Brien would
do nothing to compromise his influence over him. Neither could
I take any action; I must wait and watch. O’Brien would, no
doubt, try to remove me; but as long as I kept within the Casa,
he thought I should be safe. He recommended me to try to please
his cousin, and even found strength to smile at my transports.
Don Balthasar liked me for the sake of his sister, who had been so
happy in England. I was his kinsman and his guest. From first
to Jast, England, the idea of my country, of my home, played a
great part in my life then; it seemed to rest upon all our thoughts.
To me it was but my boyhood, the farm at the foot of the downs—
Rooksby’s Manor—all within a small nook between the quarry by
the side of the Canterbury road and the shingle beach, whose

132 ROMANCE

regular crashing under the feet of a smuggling band was the last
shore sound of my country I had heard. For Carlos it was the
concrete image of stability, with the romantic feeling of its peace
and of Veronica’s beauty; the unchangeable land where he had
loved. ‘To O’Brien’s hate it loomed up immense and odious, like
the form of the colossal enemy. Father Antonio, in the naive
benevolence of his heart, prayed each night for its conversion, as
if it were a loved sinner. He believed this event to be not very far
off accomplishment, and told me once, with an amazing simplicity
of certitude, that ‘‘ there will be a great joy amongst the host of
heaven on that day.” It is marvelous how that distant land, from
which I had escaped as if from a prison to go in search of romance,
appeared romantic and perfect in these days—all things to all men!
With Seraphina I talked of it and its denizens as of a fabulous
country. I wonder what idea she had formed of my father, of my
mother, my sister—‘‘ Sefiora Dofia Veronica Rooksby,”’ she called
her—of the landscape, of the life, of the sky. Her eyes turned to
me seriously. Once, stooping, she plucked an orange marigold for
her hair; and at last we came to talk of our farm as of the only
perfect refuge for her.

CHAPTER III

NE evening Carlos, after a silence of distress, had said,

“There’s nothing else for it. When the crisis comes, you

must carry her off from this unhappiness and misery that
hangs over her head. You must take her out of Cuba; there is no
safety for her here.”

This took my breath away. ‘‘ But where are we to go, Carlos?”
I asked, bending over him.

““To—to England,” he whispered.

He was utterly worn out that evening by all the perplexities of
his death-bed. He made a great effort, and murmured a few words
more—about the Spanish ambassador in London being a near
relation of the Riegos; then he gave it up and lay still under my
amazed eyes. The nun was approaching, alarmed, from the shad-
ows. Father Antonio, gazing sadly upon his beloved penitent,
signed me to withdraw.

Castro had not gone away yet; he greeted me in low tones out-
side the big door.

“ Sefior,” he went on, ‘“‘ I make my report ane to his Sefioria
Don Carlos; only I have not been admitted to-day into his rooms
at all. But what I have to say is for your ear, also. “There has
arrived a friar from a Havana convent amongst the Lugarefos of
the bay. I have known him come like this before.”

I remembered that in the morning, while dressing, I had glanced
out of the narrow outside window of my room, and had seen a
brown, mounted figure passing on the sands. Its sandaled feet
dangled against the flanks of a powerful mule.

Castro shook his head. ‘‘ Malediction on his green eyes! He
baptizes the offspring of this vermin sometimes, and sits for hours
in the shade before the door of Domingo’s posada telling his beads
as piously as a devil that had turned monk for the greater undoing
of us Christians. These women crowd there to kiss his oily paw.
What else they Basta! Only I wanted to tell you, sefior,

133

134 ROMANCE

that this evening (1 just come from taking a pasear that way) there
is much talk in the villages of an evil-intentioned heretic that has
introduced himself into this our town; of an Inglez hungry for
men to hang—of you, in short.”

The moon, far advanced in its first quarter, threw an ashen,
bluish light upon one-half of the courtyard; and the straight
shadow upon the other seemed to lie at the foot of the columns,
black as a broad stroke of Indian ink.

“ And what do you think of it, Castro?”’ I asked.

“T think that Domingo has his orders. Manuel has made a
song already. And do you know its burden, sefior? Killing is its
burden. I would the devil had all the Improvisadores. They gape
round him while he twangs and screeches, the wind-bag! And he
knows what words to sing to them, too. He has talent. Mala-
detta!”

“Well, and what do you advise? ”

“T advise the sefior to keep, now, within the Casa. No songs
can give that vermin the audacity to seek the sefior here. The gate
remains barred; the firearms are always loaded; and Cesar is a
sagacious African. But methinks this moon would fall out of the
heaven first before they would dare. . . . Keep to the Casa, I say
—I, Tomas Castro.”

He flung the corner of his cloak over his left shoulder, and pre-
ceded me to the door of my room; then, after a “ God guard you,
sefior,” continued along the colonnade. Before I had shut my
door it occurred to me that he was going on towards the part of
the gallery on which Seraphina’s apartments opened. Why?
What could he want there?

I am not so much ashamed of my sudden suspicion of him—one
did not know whom to trust—but I am a little ashamed to con-
fess that, kicking off my shoes, I crept out instantly to spy upon
him.

This part of the house was dark in the inky flood of shadow;
and before I had come to a recess in the wall, I heard the discreet
scratching of a finger-nail on a door. A streak of light darted and
disappeared, like a signal for the murmurs of two voices.

I recognized the woman’s at once. It belonged to one of Sera-
phina’s maids, a pretty little quadroon—a favorite of hers—called

PART THIRD 135

La Chica. She had slipped out, and her twitter-like whispering
reached me in the still solemnity of the quadrangle. She addressed
Castro as ‘‘ His Worship ” at every second word, for the saturnine
little man, in his unbrushed cloak and battered hat, was immensely
respected by the household. Had he not been sent to Europe to
fetch Don Carlos? He was in the confidence of the masters—
their humble friend. ‘The little tire-woman twittered of her
mistress. "The sefiorita had been most anxious all day—ever since
she had heard the friar had come. Castro muttered:

“Tell the Excellency that her orders have been obeyed. The
English caballero has been warned. I have been sleepless ‘in my
watchfulness over the guest of the house, as the sefiorita has de-
sired—for the honor of the Riegos. Let her set her mind at
ease.”

The girl then whispered to him with great animation. Did not
his worship think that it was the sefiorita’s heart which was not at
ease?

Then the quadrangle became dumb in its immobility, half sheen,
half night, with its arcades, the soothing plash of water, with its
expiring lights, in a suggestion of Castilian severity, enveloped by
the exotic softness of the air.

“What folly!” uttered Castro’s Saher voice. ‘“‘ You women
do not mind how many corpses come into your imaginings of love.
‘The mere whisper of such a thing:

She murmured swiftly. He interrupted her.

“Thy eyes, La Chica—thy eyes see only the silliness of thine
own heart. Think of thine own lovers, nifia.. Por Dios!”—he
changed to a tone of severe appreciation—“ thy foolish face looks
well by moonlight.”

I believe he was chucking her gravely under the chin. I heard
her soft, gratified cooing in answer to the compliment; the streak
of light flashed on the polished shaft of a pillar; and Castro went
on, going round to the staircase, evidently so as not to pass again
before my open door.

I forgot to shut it. I did not stop until I was in the middle of
my room; and then I stood still for a long time in a self-forgetful
ecstasy, while the many wax candles of the high candelabrum
burned without a flicker in a rich cluster of flames, as if lighted

ee ROMANCE

to throw the splendor of a celebration upon the pageant of my
thoughts.

For the honor of the Rinecs!

I came to myself. Well, it was sweet to be the object of her
anxiety and care, even on these terms—on any terms. And I felt
a sort of profound, inexpressible, grateful emotion, as though no
one, never, on no day, on no occasion, had taken thought of me
before.

I should not be able to sleep. I went to the window, and leaned
my forehead on the iron bar.. There was no glass; the heavy
shutter was thrown open; and, under the faint crescent of the
moon I saw a small part of the beach, very white, the long streak
of light lying mistily on the bay, and two black shapes, cloaked,
moving and stopping all of a piece like pillars, their immensely long
shadows running away from their feet, with the points of the hats
touching the wall of the Casa Riego. Another, a shorter, thicker
shape, appeared, walking with dignity. It was Castro. The other
two had a movement of recoil, then took off their hats.

“ Buenas noches, caballeros,” his voice said, with grim politeness.
“You are out late.”

80.1 is your worship. Vaya, sefior, con Diss We are taking
the air.’

They walked away, while Castro remained fob after them.
But I, from my elevation, noticed that they had suddenly crouched
behind some scrubby bushes growing on the edge of the sand.
Then Castro, too, passed out of my sight in the opposite direction,
muttering angrily.

I forgot them all. Everything on earth was still, and I seemed
to be looking through a casement out of an enchanted castle stand-
ing in the dreamland of romance. I breathed out the name of
Seraphina into the moonlight in an increasing transport.

“Seraphina! Seraphina! Seraphina! ”

The repeated beauty of the sound intoxicated me.

“‘Seraphina! ” I cried aloud, and stopped, astounded at myself.
And the moonlight of romance seemed to whisper spitefully from
below:

“Death to the traitor! Vengeance for our brothers dead on
the English gallows! ”’

PART THIRD I

“Come away, Manuel.”

“No. I aman artist. It is necessary for my soul.”

“ Be quiet!”

Their hissing ascended along the wall from under the window.
The two Lugarefos had stolen in unnoticed by me. There was a
- stifled metallic ringing, as of a guitar carried under _a cloak.

“Vengeance on the heretic Inglez/”

“ Come away! They may suddenly open the gate and fall upon
us with sticks.”

“My gentle spirit is roused to the accomplishment of great
things. I feel in me a valiance, an inspiration. I am no vulgar
seller of aguardiente, like Domingo. I was born to be the capataz
of the Lugarefos.”

“We shall be set upon and beaten, oh, thou Manuel. Come
away!”

There were no footsteps, only a noiseless flitting of two shadows,
and a distant voice crying:

“ Woe, woe, woe to the traitor! ”

I had not needed Castro’s warning to understand the meaning

of this. O’Brien was setting his power to work, only this Manuel’s
restless vanity had taught me exactly how the thing was to be done.
The friar had been exciting the minds of this rabble against me;
awakening their suspicions, their hatred, their fears.
_I remained at the casement, lost in rather somber reflections.
I was now a prisoner within the walls of the Casa. After all, it
mattered little. I did not want to go away unless I could carry
off Seraphina with me. What a dream! What an impossible
dream! Alone, without friends, with no place to go to, without
means of going; without, by Heaven, the right of even as much
as speaking of it to her. Carlos—Carlos dreamed—a dream of
his dying hours. England was so far, the enemy so near; and—
Providence itself seemed to have forgotten me.

A sound of.panting made me turn my head. Father Antonio
‘was mopping his brow in the doorway. Though a heavy man, he
was noiseless of foot. A wheezing would be heard along the dark
galleries some time before his black bulk approached you with a
gliding motion. He had the outward placidity of corpulent people,
a natural artlessness of demeanor which was amusing and attract-

La)
a |

138 ~ ROMANCE

ive, and there was something shrewd in his simplicity. Indeed,
he must have displayed much tact and shrewdness to have defeated
all O’Brien’s efforts to oust him from his position of confessor to
the household. What had helped him to hold his ground was
that, as he said to me once, “I, too, my son, am a legacy of that
truly pious and noble lady, the wife of Don Riego. I was made
her spiritual director soon after her marriage, and I may say that
she showed more discretion in the choice of her confessor than in
that of her man of affairs. But what would you have? ‘The best
of us, except for Divine grace, is liable to err; and, poor woman,
let us hope that, in her blessed state, she is spared the knowledge
of the iniquities going on here below in the Casa.”

He used to talk to me in that strain, coming in almost every
evening on his way from the sick room. He, too, had his own
perplexities, which made him wipé his forehead repeatedly; after-
wards he used to spread his red bandanna handkerchief over his
knees.

He sympathized with Carlos, his beloved penitent, with Sera-
phina, his dear daughter, whom he had baptized and instructed in
the mysteries of ‘‘ our holy religion,” and he allowed himself often
to drop the remark that his “ illustrious spiritual son,” Don Bal-
thasar, after a stormy life of which men knew only too much, had
attained to a state of truly childlike and God-fearing innocence—
a sign, no doubt, of Heaven’s forgiveness for those excesses. He
ended, always, by sighing heartily, to sit with his gaze on the
floor. .

That night he came in silently, and, after shutting the door with
care, took his habitual seat, a broad wooden armchair.

“ How did your reverence leave Don Carlos?” I asked.

“Very low,” he said. ‘“‘ The disease is making terrible ravages,
and my ministrations I ought to be used to the sight of .
human misery, but He raised his hands; a genuine emo-
tion overpowered him; then, uncovering his face to stare at me,
“ He is lost, Don Juan,” he exclaimed.

“Indeed, I fear we are about to lose him, your reverence,” I
said, surprised at this display. It seemed inconceivable that he
should have been in doubt up to this very moment.

He rolled his eyes painfully. I was forgetting the infinite might

”

PART THIRD 139

of God. Still, nothing short of a miracle But what had we
done to deserve miracles?

“Where is the ancient piety of our forefathers which made
Spain so great?” he apostrophized the empty air, a little wildly, as
if in distraction. ‘“‘ No, Don Juan; even I, a true servant of our
faith, am conscious of not having had enough grace for my humble
ministrations to poor sailors and soldiers—men naturally inclined
to sin, but simple. And now—there are two great nobles, the
fortune of a great house. . . .”

I looked at him and wondered, for he was, in a manner, wring-
ing his hands, as if in immense distress.

“We are all thinking of that poor child—mas que, Don Juan,
imagine all that wealth devoted to the iniquitous purposes of that
man. Her happiness sacrificed.”

“IT cannot imagine this—I will not,” I interrupted, so violently,
that he hushed me with both hands uplifted.

“To these wild enterprises against your own country,” he went

on vehemently, disregarding my exasperated and contemptuous
laugh. “ And she herself, the nifa. I have baptized her; I have
instructed her; and a more noble disposition, more naturally in-
clined to the virtues and proprieties of her sex But, Don
Juan, she has pride, which doubtless is a gift of God, too, but it
is made a snare of by Satan, the roaring lion, the thief of souls.
And what if her feminine rashness—women are rash, my son,” he
interjected with unction—‘“ and her pride were to lead her into
—I am horrified at the thought—into an act of mortal sin for
which there is no repentance?”

“Enough!” I shouted at him.

“No repentance,” he repeated, rising to his feet excitedly, and
I stood before him, my arms down my sides, with my fists clenched.

Why did the stupid priest come to talk like this to me, as if I
had not enough of my own unbearable thoughts?

He sat down and began to flourish his handkerchief. There was
depicted on his broad face—depicted simply and even touchingly
—the inward conflict of his benevolence and of his doubts.

‘“‘T observe your emotion, my son,” he said. I must have been
as pale as death. And, after a pause, he meditated aloud, “ And,
-after all, you English are a reverent nation. You, a scion of the

ifo. ROMANCE

nobility, have been brought up in deplorable rebellion against the
authority of God on this earth; but you are not a scoffer—not a
scoffer. I, a humble priest But, after all, the Holy Father
himself, in his inspired wisdom I have prayed to be enlight-
ened. « » ox

He spread the square of his damp handkerchief on his knees, and
bowed his head. I had regained command over myself, but I

did not understand in the least. I had passed from my exasperation |

into a careworn fatigue of mind that was like utter darkness.

“ After all,” he said, looking up naively, “the business of us
priests is to save souls. It is a solemn time when death approaches.
The affairs of this world should be cast aside. And yet God
surely does not mean us to abandon the living to the mercy of the
wicked.”

A sadness came upon his face, his eyes; all the world seemed
asleep. He made an effort. ‘“‘ My son,” he said with decision,
“T call you to follow me to the bedside of Don Carlos at this
very hour of night. I, a humble priest, the unworthy instrument
of God’s grace, call upon you to bring him a peace which my minis-
trations cannot give. His time is near.”

I rose up, startled by his solemnity, by the hint of hidden signifi-
cance in these words.

“Ts he dying now?”’ I cried.

“ He ought to detach his thoughts from this earth; and if there
is no other way: ag

“What way? What am I expected to do?”

““My son, I had observed your emotion. We, the appointed
confidants of men’s frailties, are quick to discern the signs of their

innermost feelings. Let me tell you that my cherished daughter |

in God, Sefiorita Dofia Seraphina Riego, is with Don Carlos, the

—

virtual head of the family, since his Excellency Don Balthasar is in _

a state of, I may say, infantile innocence.”
“What do you mean, father?” I faltered.
“She is waiting for you with him,” he pronounced, looking up.

And as his solemnity seemed to have deprived me of my power to ]

move, he added, with his ordinary simplicity, ““ Why, my son, she
is, I may say, not wholly indifferent to your person.”
I could not have dropped more suddenly into the chair had the

PART THIRD 141

good padre discharged a pistol into my breast. He went away;
and when I leapt up, I saw a young man in black velvet and white
ruffles staring at me out of the large mirror set frameless into the
wall, like the apparition of a Spanish ghost with my own English
face.

When I ran out, the moon had sunk below the ridge of the roof;
the whole quadrangle of the Casa had turned black under the
stars, with only a yellow glimmer of light falling into the well of
the court from the lamp under the vaulted gateway. The form
of the priest had gone out of sight, and a far-away knocking,
mingling with my footfalls, seemed to be part of the tumult within
my heart. Below, a voice at the gate challenged, ‘“‘ Who goes
there?”’ I ran on. ‘Two tiny flames burned before Carlos’ door
at the end of the long vista, and two of Seraphina’s maids shrank
away from the great mahogany panels at my approach. The
candlesticks trembled askew in their hands; the wax guttered
down, and the taller of the two girls, with an uncovered long
neck, gazed at me out of big sleepy eyes in a sort of dumb wonder.
The teeth of the plump little one—La Chica—rattled violently
like castanets. She moved aside with a hysterical little laugh,
and glanced upwards at me.

I stopped, as if I had intruded; of all the persons in the sick-
room, not one turned ahead. The stillness of the lights, of things,
of the air, seemed to have passed into Seraphina’s face. She stood
with a stiff carriage under the heavy hangings of the bed, looking
very Spanish and romantic in her short black skirt, a black lace
shawl enveloping her head, her shoulders, her arms, as low as the
waist. Her bare feet, thrust into high-heeled slippers, lent to
her presence an air of flight, as if she had run into that room in
distress or fear. Carlos, sitting up amongst the snowy pillows of
eider-down at his back, was not speaking to her. He had done; and
the flush on his cheek, the eager luster of his eyes, gave him an
appearance of animation, almost of joy, a sort of consuming, flame-
like brilliance. They were waiting for me. With all his eagerness
and air of life, all he could do was to lift his white hand an inch
or two off the silk coverlet that spread over his limbs smoothly,
like a vast crimson pall. There was something joyous and cruel
in the-shimmer of this piece of color, contrasted with the dead

142 ROMANCE

white of the linen, the duskiness of the wasted face, the dark head
with no visible body, symbolically motionless. The confused shad-
ows and the tarnished splendor of emblazoned draperies, looped
up high under the ceiling, fell in heavy and unstirring folds right
down to the polished floor, that reflected the lights like a sheet of
water, or rather like ice.

I felt it slippery under my feet. I, alone, had to move, in this
great chamber, with its festive patches of color amongst the
funereal shadows, with the expectant, still figures of priest and
nun, servants of passionless eternity, as if immobilized and made
mute by hostile wonder before the perishable triumph of life and
love. And only the impatient tapping of the sick man’s hand
on the stiff silk of the coverlet was heard.

It called tome. Seraphina’s unstirring head was lighted sironatt
by a two-branched sconce on the wall; and when I stood by her
side, not even the shadow of the eyelashes on her cheek trembled.
Carlos’ lips moved; his voice was almost extinct; but for all his
emaciation, the profundity of his eyes, the sunken cheeks, the
hollow temples, he remained attractive, with the charm of his
gallant and romantic temper worn away to an almost unearthly
fineness.

He was going to have his desire because, on the threshold of his
spiritual inheritance, he refused, or was unable, to turn his gaze
away from this world. Father Antonio’s business was to save this
soul; and with a sort of simple and sacerdotal shrewdness, in which
there was much love for his most noble penitent, he would try to
appease its trouble by a romantic satisfaction. His voice, very
grave and profound, addressed me:

“Approach, my son—nearer. We trust the natural feelings of
pity which are implanted in every human breast, the nobility of
your extraction, the honor of your hidalguidad, and that inextin-
guishable courage which, as by the unwearied mercy of God, dis-
tinguishes the sons of your fortunate and unhappy nation.” His
bass voice, deepened in solemn utterance, vibrated huskily. There
was a rustic dignity in his uncouth form, in his broad face, in the
gesture of the raised hand. “ You shall promise to respect the
dictates of our conscience, guided by the authority of our faith; to
defer to our scruples, and to the procedure of our Church in matters

PART THIRD 143

which we believe touch the welfare of our souls. . . . You
promise? ”

He waited. Carlos’ eyes burned darkly on my face. What
were they asking of me? This was nothing. Of course I would
respect her scruples—her scruples—if my heart should break. I
felt her living intensely by my side; she could be brought no
nearer to me by anything they could do, or I could promise. She
had already all the devotion of my love and youth, the unreasoning
and potent devotion, without a thought or hope of reward. I
was almost ashamed to pronounce the two words they expected.

“T promise.”

And suddenly the meaning pervading this scene, something that
was in my mind already, and that I had hardly dared to look at
till now, became clear to me in its awful futility against the dan-
gers, in all its remote consequences. It was a betrothal. The
priest—Carlos, too—must have known that it had no binding
power. To Carlos it was symbolic of his wishes. Father Antonio
was thinking of the papal dispensation. I was a heretic. What if
it were refused? But what was that risk to me, who had never
dared to hope? Moreover, they had brought her there, had per-
suaded her; she had been influenced by her fears, impressed by
Carlos. What could she care for me? And I repeated:

“T promise. I promise, even at the cost of suffering and un-
happiness, never to demand anything from her against her con-
science.”

Carlos’ voice sounded weak. “I answer for him, good father.”
Then he seemed to wander in a whisper, which we two caught
faintly, “ He resembles his sister. O Divine *

And on this ghostly sigh, on this breath, with the feeble click
of beads in the nun’s hands, a silence fell upon the room, vast as
the stillness of a world of unknown faiths, loves, beliefs, of silent
illusions, of unexpressed passions and secret motives that live in our
unfathomable hearts.

Seraphina had given me a quick glance—the first glance—which
I had rather felt than seen. Carlos made an effort, and, raising
himself, put her hand in mine.

Father Antonio, trying to pronounce a short allocution, broke
down, naive in his emotion, as he had been in his dignity. I could

144 ROMANCE

at first catch only the words, “ Beloved child—Holy Father—
poor priest. . . .” He had taken this upon himself; and he would
attest the purity of our intentions, the necessity of the case, the
assent of the head of the family, my excellent disposition. All the
Englishmen had excellent dispositions. He would, personally, go
to the foot of the Holy See—on his knees, if necessary. Mean-
time, a document—he should at once prepare a justificative docu-
ment. The archbishop, it is true, did not like him on account of
the calumnies of that man O’Brien. But there was, beyond the
seas, the supreme authority of the Church, unerring and inaccessible
to calumnies.

All that time Seraphina’s hand was lying passive in my palm—
warm, soft, living; all the life, all the world, all the happiness,
the only desire—and I dared not close my grasp, afraid of the
vanity of my hopes, shrinking from the intense felicity in the
audacious act. Father Antonio—I must say the word—blubbered.
He was now only a tender-hearted, simple old man, nothing more.

“ Before God now, Don Juan. . . . I am only a poor priest,
but invested with a sacred office, an enormous power. ‘Tremble,
sefior, it is a young girl. . . . I have loved her like my own; for,
indeed, I have in baptism given her the spiritual life. You owe
her protection; it is for that, before God, sefior 7

It was as if Carlos had swooned; his eyes were closed, his face
like a carving. But gradually the suggestion of a tender and
ironic smile appeared on his lips. With a slow effort he raised his
arm and his eyelids, in an appeal of all his weariness for my ear.
I made a movement to stoop over him, and the floor, the great bed,
the whole room, seemed to heave and sway. I felt a slight, a
fleeting pressure of Seraphina’s hand before it slipped out of mine;
I thought, in the beating rush of blood to my temples, that I was
going mad.

He had thrown his arm over my neck; there was the calming
austerity of death on his lips, that just touched my ear and de-
parted, together with the far-away sound of the words, losing
themselves in the remoteness of another world:

“ Like an Englishman, Juan.”

“On my honor, Carlos.”

His arm, releasing my neck, fell stretched out on the coverlet.

PART THIRD 145

Father Antonio had mastered his emotion; with the trail of un-
dried tears on his face, he had become a priest again, exalted above
the reach of his earthly sorrow by the august concern of his sacer-
doce.

“Don Carlos, my son, is your mind at ease, now?”

Carlos closed his eyes slowly.

“Then turn all your thoughts to heaven.” Father Antonio’s
bass voice rose, aloud, with an extraordinary authority. “‘ You
have done with the earth.”

The arm of the nun touched the cords of the curtains, and the
massive folds shook and fell expanded, hiding from us the priest
and the penitent.

CHAPTER IV
ERAPHINA and I moved towards the door sadly, as if

under the oppression of a memory, as people go back from

the side of a grave to the cares of life. No exultation pos-
sessed me. Nothing had happened. It had been a sick man’s
whim. ;

“ Sefiorita,” I said low, with my hand on the wrought bronze
of the door-handle, “‘ Don Carlos might have died in full trust of
my devotion to you—without this.”

“T know it,” she answered, hanging her head.

“Tt was his wish,” I said. ‘“‘ And I deferred.”

“Tt was his wish,” she repeated.

“ Remember he had asked you for no promise.”

“Yes, it is you only he has asked. You have remembered it very
well, sefior. And you—you ask for nothing.”

“No,” I said; “neither from your heart nor from your con-
science—nor from your gratitude. Gratitude from you! As if it
were not I that owe you gratitude for having condescended to
stand with your hand in mine—if only for a moment—if only to
bring peace to a dying man; for giving me the felicity, the illusion
of this wonderful instant, that, all my life, I shall remember as
those who are suddenly stricken blind remember the great glory
of the sun. I shall live with it, I shall cherish it in my heart to
my dying day; and I promise never to mention it to you again.”

Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes remained downcast, her
head drooped as if in extreme attention.

“T asked for no promise,” she murmured coldly.

My heart was heavy. “Thank you for that proof of your
confidence,” I said. “I am yours without any promises. Wholly
yours. But what can I offer? What help? What refuge? What
protection? What can I do? I can only die for you. Ah, but
this was cruel of Carlos, when he knew that I had nothing else
but my poor life to give.”

146

PART THIRD 147

“T accept that,” she said unexpectedly.

“ Sefiorita, it is generous of you to accept so worthless a gift—
a life I value not at all save for one unique memory which I owe
to you.”

I knew she was looking at me while I swung open the door with
a low bow. I did not trust myself to look at her. An unreason-
able disenchantment, like the awakening from a happy dream, op-
pressed me. I felt an almost angry desire to seize her in my arms
—to go back to my dream. If I had looked at her then, I believed
I could not have controlled myself.

She passed out ; and when I looked up there was O’Brien booted
and spurred, but otherwise in his lawyer’s black, inclining his
dapper figure profoundly before her in the dim gallery. She had
stopped short. The two maids, huddled together behind her, stared
with terrified eyes. The flames of their candles vacillated very
much.

I closed the door quietly. Carlos was done with the earth.
This had become my affair; and the necessity of coming to an
immediate decision almost deprived me of my power of thinking.
The necessity had arisen too swiftly; the arrival of that man acted
like the sudden apparition of a phantom. It had been expected,
however ; only, from the moment we had turned away from Carlos’
bedside, we had thought of nothing but ourselves; we had dwelt
alone in our emotions, as if there had been no inhabitant of flesh
and blood on the earth but we two. Our danger had been present,
no doubt, in our minds, because we drew it in with every breath.
It was the indispensable condition of our contact, of our words, of
our thoughts; it was the atmosphere of our feelings; a something
as all-pervading and impalpable as the air we drew into our lungs.
And suddenly this danger, this breath of our life, had taken this
material form. It was material and expected, and yet it had the
effect of an evil specter, inasmuch as one did not know where
and how it was vulnerable, what precisely it would do, how one
should defend one’s self.

His bow was courtly; his gravity was all in his bearing, which
was quiet and confident: the manner of a capable man, the sort of
man the great of this earth find invaluable and are inclined to
trust. His full-shaven face had a good-natured, almost a good-

148 ROMANCE

humored expression, which I have come to think must have de-
pended on the cast of his features, on the setting of his eyes—
on some peculiarity not under his control, or else he could not
have preserved it so well. In certain occasions, as this one, for
instance, it affected me as a refinement of cynicism; and, gener- —
ally, it was startling, like the assumption of a mask inappropriate
to the action and the speeches of the part.

He had journeyed in his customary manner overland from Ha-
vana, arriving unexpectedly at night, as he had often done before;
only this time he had found the little door, cut out in one of the
sides of the big gate, bolted fast. It was his knocking I had heard,
as I hurried after the priest. The major-domo, who had been
called up to let him in, told me afterwards that the sefior in-
tendente had put no question whatever to him as to this, and had
gone on, as usual, towards his own room. Nobody knew what
was going on in Carlos’ chamber, but, of course, he came upon the
two girls at the door. He said nothing to them either, only just
stopped there and waited, leaning with one elbow on the balustrade
with his good-tempered, gray eyes fixed on the door. He had fully
expected to see Seraphina come out presently, but I think he did
not count on seeing me as well. When he straightened himself
up after the bow, we two were standing side by side.

I had stepped quickly towards her, asking myself what he would
do. He did not seem to be armed; neither had I any weapon about
me. Would he fly at my throat? I was the bigger, and the
younger man. I wished he would. But he found a way of making
me feel all his other advantages. He did not recognize my exist-
ence. He appeared not to see me at all. He seemed not to be
aware of Seraphina’s startled immobility, of my firm attitude; but
turning his good-humored face towards the two girls, who appeared
ready to sink through the floor before his gaze, he shook his fore-
finger at them slightly.

This was all. He was not menacing; he was almost playful;
and this gesture, marvelous in its economy of effort, disclosed all
the might and insolence of his power. It had the unerring efficacy
of an act of instinct. It was instinct. He could not know how
he dismayed us by that shake of the finger. The tall girl dropped
her candlestick with a clatter, and fled along the gallery like a

PART THIRD 149

shadow. La Chica cowered under the wall. The light of her
candle just touched dimly the form of a negro boy, waiting pas-
sively in the background with O’Brien’s saddle-bags over his
shoulder.

“You see,” said Seraphina to me, in a swift, desolate murmur.
“They are all like this—all, all.”

Without a change of countenance, without emphasis, he said to
her in French:

“ Votre pere sans doute, senorita.”

And she intrepidly, ““ You know very well. Sefior Intendente,
that nothing can make him open his eyes.”

“So it seems,” he muttered between his teeth, stooping to pick
up the dropped candlestick. It was lying at my feet. I could have
taken him at a disadvantage, then; I could have felled him with
one blow, thrown myself upon his back. Thus may an athletic
prisoner set upon a jailer coming into his cell, if there were not
the prison, the locks, the bars, the heavy gates and the walls, all
the apparatus of captivity, and the superior weight of the idea
chaining down the will, if not the courage.

It might have been his knowledge of this, or his absolute disdain
of me. The unconcerned manner he busied himself—his head
within striking distance of my fist—in lighting the extinguished
candle from the trembling Chica’s humiliated me beyond expres-
sion. He had some difficulty with that, till he said to her just
audibly, “Calm thyself, mnifia,’ and she became rigid in her ap-
pearance of excessive terror.

He turned, then, towards Seraphina, candlestick in hand, cour-
teously saying in Spanish:

“May I be allowed to help light you to your door, since that
silly Juanita—I think it was Juanita—has taken leave of her
senses? She is not fit to remain in your service—any more than
this one here.”

With a gasp of desolation, La Chica began to sob limply against
the wall. I made one step forward; and, holding the candle well
up, as though for the purpose of examining my face carefully, he
never looked my way, while he and Seraphina were exchanging a
few phrases in French which I did not understand well enough to
follow.

150 ROMANCE

He was politely interrogatory, it seemed to me. The natural,
good-humored expression never left his face, as though he had a
fund of inexhaustible patience for dealing with the unaccountable
trifles of a woman’s conduct. Seraphina’s shawl had slipped off
her head. The Chica sidled towards her, sobbing a deep sob now
and then, without any sign of tears; and with their scattered hair,
their bare arms, the disorder of their attire, they looked like two
women discovered in a secret flight for life. Only the mistress
stood her ground firmly; her voice was decided; there was resolu-
tion in the way one little white hand clutched the black lace on her
_ bosom. Only once she seemed to hesitate in her replies. “Then,
after a pause he gave her for reflection, he appeared to repeat his
question. She glanced at me apprehensively, as I thought, before
she confirmed the previous answer by a slow inclination of her
head.

Had he allowed himself to make a provoking movement, a
dubious gesture of any sort, I would have flung myself upon him
at once; but the nonchalant manner in which he looked away,
while he extended to me his hand with the candlestick, amazed
me. I simply took it from him. He stepped back, with a cere-
monious bow for Seraphina. La Chica ran up close to her elbow.
I heard her voice saying sadly, ‘‘ You need fear nothing for your-
self, child’; and they moved away slowly. I remained facing
O’Brien, with a vague notion of protecting their retreat.

This time it was I who was holding the light before his face.
It was calm and colorless; his eyes were fixed on the ground re-
flectively, with the appearance of profound and quiet absorption.
But suddenly I perceived the convulsive clutch of his hand on the
skirt of his coat. It was as if accidentally I had looked inside the
man—upon the strength of his illusions, on his desire, on his
passion. Now he will fly at me, I thought, with a tremendously
convincing certitude. Now All my muscles, stiffening, an-
swered the appeal of that thought of battle.

He said, ‘‘ Won’t you give me that light?”

And I understood he demanded a surrender.

“T would see you die first where you stand,” was my an-
swer.

This object in my hand had become endowed with moral mean-

PART THIRD 151

ing—significant, like a symbol—only to be torn from me with
my life.

He lifted his head ; the light twinkled in his eyes. ‘‘ Oh, J won’t
die,” he said, with that bizarre suggestion of humor in his face,
in his subdued voice. “ But it is a small thing; and you are young;
it may be yet worth your while to try and please me—this time.”

Before I could answer, Seraphina, from some little distance,
called out hurriedly:

“Don Juan, your arm.”

Her voice, sounding a little unsteady, made me forget O’Brien,
and, turning my back on him, I ran up to her. She needed my
support; and before us La Chica tottered and stumbled along with
the lights, moaning:

“ Madre de Dios! What will become of us now! Oh, what
will become of us now! ”

“You know what he had asked me to let him do,” Seraphina
talked rapidly. ‘“‘I made answer, ‘ No; give the light to my
cousin.’ Then he said, ‘ Do you really wish it, sefiorita? I am
the older friend.’ I repeated, ‘ Give the light to my cousin, sefior.’
He, then, cruelly, ‘ For the young man’s own sake, reflect, sefiorita.’
And he waited before he asked me again, ‘ Shall I surrender it to
him?’ I felt death upon my heart, and all my fear for you—
there.” She touched her beautiful throat with a swift movement
of a hand that disappeared at once under the lace. “ And be-
cause I could not speak, I Don Juan, you have just offered
me your life—I Misericordia! What else was possible? I
made with my head the sign ‘ Yes.’ ”

In the stress, hurry, and rapture encompassing my immense grati-
tude, I pressed her hand to my side familiarly, as if we had been
two lovers walking in a lane on a serene evening.

“Tf you had not made that sign, it would have been worse ‘than
death—in my heart,” I said. “ He had asked me, too, to renounce
my trust, my light.”

We walked on slowly, accompanied in our sudden silence by
the plash of the fountain at the bottom of the great square of dark-
ness on our left, and by the piteous moans of the Chica.

“That is what he meant,” said the enchanting voice by my
side. ‘“‘ And you refused. That is your valor.”

152 ROMANCE

“ From no selfish motives,” I said, troubled, as if all the great
incertitude of my mind had been awakened by the sound that
brought so much delight to my heart. “ My valor is nothing.”

“Tt has given me a new courage,” she said.

“You did not want more,” I said earnestly.

“Ah! I was very much alone. It is difficult tt-——” She
hesitated.

“To live alone,” I finished.

“More so to die,” she whispered, with a new note of timidity.
“Tt is frightful. Be cautious, Don Juan, for the love of God,
because I could not: s

We stopped. La Chica, silent, as if exhausted, drooped lamen-
tably, with her shoulder against the wall, by Seraphina’s door; and
the pure crystalline sound of the fountain below, enveloping the
parting pause, seemed to wind its coldness round my heart.

“Poor Don Carlos!” she said. “I had a great affection for
him. I was afraid they would want me to marry him. He loved
your sister.”

“He never told her,” I murmured. ‘‘I wonder if she ever
guessed.”

“* He was poor, homeless, ill already, in a foreign land.”

“We all loved him at home,” I said.

“ He never asked her,” she breathed out. ‘“‘ And, perhaps—
but he never asked her.”

“T have no more force,” sighed La Chica, suddenly, and sank
down at the foot of the wall, putting the candlesticks on the
floor.

“You have been very good to him,” I said; “ only he need not
have demanded this from you. Of course, I understood perfectly.

I hope you understand, too, that I

“Sefior, my cousin,” she flashed out suddenly, “do you think
that I would have consented only from my affection for him?”

“Sefiorita,” I cried, ““I am poor, homeless, in a foreign land.
How can I believe? How can I dare to dream?—unless your
own voice 2 3

“Then you are permitted to ask. Ask, Don Juan.”

I dropped on one knee, and, suddenly extending her arm, she
pressed her hand to my lips. Lighted up from below, the pictur-

Gpieennateed

PART THIRD 153

esque aspect of her figure took on something of a. transcendental
grace; the unusual upward shadows invested her beauty with a
_ new mystery of fascination. A minute passed. I could hear her
rapid breathing above, and I stood up before her, holding both her
hands.

“How very few days have we been together,’
“ Juan, I am ashamed.”

“I did not count the days. I have known you always. I have
dreamed of you since I can remember—for days, for months, a year,
all my life.”

The crash of a heavy door flung to, exploded, filling the
galleries all round the patio with the sonorous reminder of our
peril.

“ Ah! We had forgotten.”

I heard her voice, and felt her form in my arms. Her lips at
my ear pronounced:

“Remember, Juan. Two lives, but one death only.”

And she was gone so quickly that it was as though she had
passed through the wood of the massive panels.

The Chica crouched on her knees. The lights on the floor
burned before her empty stare, and with her bare shoulders the
tone of old ivory emerging from the white linen, with the wisps of
raven hair hanging down her cheeks, the abandonment of her
whole person embodied every outward mark and line of desolation.

“What do you fear from him?” I asked.

She looked up; moved nearer to me on her knees. “I have a
lover outside.”

She seized her hair wildly, drew it across her face, tried to
stuff handfuls of it into her mouth, as if to stop herself from
shrieking.

“ He shook his finger at me,” she moaned.

Her terror, as incomprehensible as the emotion of an animal,
was gaining upon me. I said sternly:

“What can he do, then? ”

“T don’t know.”

She did not know. She was like me. She feared for her love.
Like myself! Was there anything in the way of our undoing
which it was not in his power to achieve?

> she whispered.

154 ROMANCE
“Try to be faithful to your mistress,” I said, “and all may be
well yet.”

She made no answer, but staggered to her feet, and went away
blindly through the door, which opened just wide enough to let
her through. There were clouds on the sky. The patio, in its
blackness, was like the rectangular mouth of a bottomless pit. I
picked up the candlesticks, and lighted myself to my room, walking
upon air, upon tempestuous air, in a feeling of insecurity and exul-
tation.

The lights of my candelabrum had gone out. I stood the two
candlesticks on a table, and the shadows of the room, uplifted
above the two flames as high as the ceiling, filled the corners
heavily like gathered draperies, descended to the foot of the four
walls in the shape of a military tent, in which warlike objects
vaguely gleamed: a trophy of ancient arequebuses and conquering
swords, arranged with the bows, the spears, the stick and stone
weapons of an extinct race, a war collar of shells or pebbles, a
round wicker-work shield in a halo of arrows, with a matchlock
piece on each side—of the sort that had to be served by two men.

I had left the door of my room open on purpose, so that he should
know I was back there, and ready for him. I took down a long
straight blade, like a rapier, with a basket hilt. It was a cumbrous
weapon, and with a blunt edge; still, it had a point, and I was
ready to thrust and parry against the world. I called upon my
foes. No enemy appeared, and by the light of two candles, with
a sword in my hand, I lost myself in the foreshadowings of the
future.

It was positive and uncertain. I wandered in it like a soul out-
side the gates of paradise, with an anticipation of bliss, and the
pain of my exclusion. There was only one man in the way. I
was certain he had been watching us across the blackness of the
patio. He must have seen the dimly-lit dumbshow of our parting
at Seraphina’s door. I hoped he had understood, and that my
shadow, bearing the two lights, had struck him as triumphant and
undismayed, walking upon air. I strained my ears. I had
heard. 5.5

Somebody was coming towards me along the silent galleries.
It was he; I knew it. He was coming nearer and nearer. In the

—

PART THIRD | 155

profound, tomb-like stillness of the great house, I had heard the
sound of his footsteps on the tesselated pavement from afar. Now
he had turned the corner, and the calm, strolling pace of his ap-
proach was enough to strike awe into an adversary’s heart. It
never hesitated, not once; never hurried; never slower till they
stopped. He stood in the doorway.

I suppose, in that big room, by the light of two candles, I must
have presented an impressive picture of a menacing youth all in
black, with a tense face, and holding a naked, long rapier in his
hand. At any rate, he stood still, eying me from the doorway, the
picture of a dapper Spanish lawyer in a lofty frame; all in black,
also, with a fair head and a well-turned leg advanced in a black
silk stocking. He had taken off his riding boots. For the rest, ‘I
had never seen him dressed otherwise. There was no weapon in his
hand, or at his side.

I lowered the point, and, seeing he remained on the doorstep, as
if not willing to trust himself within, I said disdainfully:

“You don’t suppose I would murder a defenseless man.”

“Am I defenseless?” He had a slight lift of the eyebrows. —
“That, is news, indeed. It is you who are supposing. I have
been a very certain man for this many a year.”

“ How can you know how an English gentleman would feel
and act? I am neither a murderer nor yet an intriguer.”

He walked right in rapidly, and, getting round to the other
side of the table, drew a small pistol out of his breeches pocket.

“You see—I am not trusting too much to your English gen-
erosity.””

He laid the pistol negligently on the table. I had turned about
on my heels. As we stood, by lunging between the two candle-
sticks, I should have been able to run him through the body before
he could cry out.

I laid the sword on the table.

“Would you trust a damned Irish rebel? ”’ he asked.

“You are wrong in your surmise. I would have nothing to do
with a rebel, even in my thoughts and suppositions. I think that
the Intendente of Don Balthasar Riego would look twice before
murdering in a bedroom the guest of the house—a relation, a friend
of the family.”

156 ROMANCE

“That’s sensible,” he said, with that unalterable air of good
nature, which sometimes was like the most cruel mockery of
humor. “ And do you think that even a relation of the Riegos
would escape the scaffold for killing Don Patricio O’Brien, one
of the Royal Judges of the Marine Court, member of the Council,
Procurator to the Chapter. . . .”

“TIntendente of the Casa,” I threw in.

“ That’s my gratitude,” he said gravely. ‘“‘So you see... .

“‘ Supreme chief of thieves and picaroons,” I suggested again.

He answered this by a gesture of disdainful superiority.

“TI wonder if you—if any of you English—would have the
courage to risk your all—ambition, pride, position, wealth, peace of
mind, your dearest hope, your self-respect—like this. For an idea.”

His tone, that revealed something exalted and sad behind every-
thing that was sordid and base in the acts of that man’s villainous
tools, struck me with astonishment. I beheld, as an inseparable
whole, the contemptible result, the childishness of his imagination,
the danger of his recklessness, and something like loftiness in his
pitiful illusion.

“ Nothing’s too hot, too dirty, too heavy. Any way to get at
you English; any means. To strike! That’s the thing. I would
die happy if I knew I had helped to detach from you one island—
one little island of all the earth you have filched away, stolen,
taken by force, got by lying. . . . Don’t taunt me with your
taunts of thieves. What weapons better worthy of you could I
use? Oh, I am modest. I am modest. This is a little thing, this
Jamaica. What do I care for the Separationist blatherskite more
than for the loyal fools? You are all English tome. If I had my
way, your Empire would die of pin-pricks all over its big-over-
grown body. Let only one bit drop off. If robbing your ships may
help it, then, as you see me standing here, I am ready to go myself
in a leaky boat. I tell you Jamaica’s gone. And that may be the
beginning of the end.”

He lifted his arm not at me, but at England, if I may judge
from his burning stare. It was not to me he was speaking. There
we were, Irish and English, face to face, as it had been ever since
we had met in the narrow way of the world that had never been
big enough for the tribes, the nations, the races of man.

”

=n ca

PART THIRD 157

Now, Mr. O’Brien, I don’t know what you may do to me, but
I won’t listen to any of this,” I said, very red in the face.

“Who wants you to listen?’ he muttered absently, and went
away from the table to look out of the loophole, leaving me there
with the sword and the pistol.

Whatever he might have said of the scaffold, this was very
imprudent of him. It was characteristic of the man—of that -
impulsiveness which existed in him side by side with his sagacity,
with his coolness in intrigue, with his unmerciful and revengeful
temper. By my own feelings I understood what an imprudence it
was. But he was turning his back on me, and how could I? ...
His imprudence was so complete that it made for security. He did
not, I am sure, remember my existence. I would just as soon have
jumped with a dagger upon a man in the dark.

He was really stirred to his depths—to the depths of his hate,
and of his love—by seeing me, an insignificant youth (I was no
more), surge up suddenly in his path. He turned where he stood at
last, and contemplated me with a sort of thoughtful surprise, as
though he had tried to account to himself for my existence.

“No,” he said, to himself really, “ I wonder when I look at
you. How did you manage to get that pretty reputation over
there? Ramon’s a fool. He shall know it to his cost. But the
craftiness of that Carlos! Or is it only my confounded willingness
to believe?”

He was putting his finger nearly on the very spot. I said
nothing.

“Why,” he exclaimed, “ when it’s all boiled down, you are
only an English beggar boy.”

“T’ve come to a man’s estate since we had met last,” I said
meaningly.

He seemed to meditate over this. His face never changed, ex-
cept, perhaps, to an even more amused benignity of expression.

“You have lived very fast by that account,” he remarked art-
lessly. “Is it possible, now? Well, life, as you know, can’t last
forever; and, indeed, taking a better look at you in n this poor light,
you do seem to be very near death.”

I did not flinch; and, with a very dry mouth, I uttered defiantly:

“Such talk means nothing.”

158 ROMANCE

“ Bravely said. But this is not talk. You’ve gone too fast.
I am giving you a chance to turn back.”

“ Not an inch,” I said fiercely. ‘‘ Neither in thought, in deed;
not even in semblance.”

He seemed as though he wanted to swallow a bone in his throat.

“‘ Believe me, there is more in life than you think. ‘There is at
your age, more than . . .” he had a strange contortion of the
body, as though in a sudden access of internal pain; that humorous
smile, that abode in the form of his lips, changed into a ghastly,
forced grin . . . “than one love in a life—more than one
woman.”

I believe he tried to leer at me, because his voice was absolutely
dying in his throat. My indignation was boundless. I cried out
with the fire of deathless conviction.

“Tt is not true. You know it is not true.”

He was speechless for a time; then, shaking and stammering
with that inward rage that seemed to heave like molten lava in
his breast, without ever coming to the surface of his face:

“What! Is it I, then, who have to go back? For—for you—
a boy—come from devil knows where—an English, beggarly. . . .
For a girl’s whim. . . . I—a man.”

He calmed down. “No; you are mad. You are dreaming.
You don’t know. You can’t—you! You don’t know what a man
is; you with your calf-love a day old. How dare you look at me
who have breathed for years in the very air? You fool—you little,
wretched fool! For years sleeping, and waking, and work-
ieee ee ed

“And intriguing,” I broke in, “and plotting, and deceiving—
for years.”

This calmed him altogether. ‘‘I am a man; you are but a boy;
or else I would not have to tell you that your love ’’—he choked
at the word—“ is to mine like—like x

His eyes fell on a cut-glass water-ewer, and, with a convulsive
sweep of his arm, he sent it flying far away from the table. It fell
heavily, shattering itself with the unringing thud of a piece of ice.

“ Like this.”

He remained for some time with his eyes fixed on the table, and
when he looked up at me it was with a sort of amused incredulity.

PART THIRD 159

His tone was not resentful. He spoke in a business-like manner, a
little contemptuously. I had only Don Carlos to thank for the
position in which I found myself. What the “ poor devil over
there ” expected from me, he, O’Brien, would not inquire. It was
a ridiculous boy and girl affair. If those two—meaning Carlos
and Seraphina—had not been so mighty clever, I should have been
- safe now in Jamaica jail, on a charge of treasonable practices. He
seemed to find the idea funny. Well, anyhow, he had meant no
worse by me than my own dear countrymen. When he, O’Brien,
had found how absurdly he had been hoodwinked by Don Carlos
—the poor devil—and misled by Ramon—he would make him
smart for it, yet—all he had intended to do was to lodge me in
Havana jail. On his word of honor. . . .

“ Me in jail!” I cried angrily. “ You—you would dare! On
what charge? You could not... .”

“You don’t know what Pat O’Brien can do in Cuba.” ‘The
little country solicitor came out in a flash from under the Spanish
lawyer. Then he frowned slightly at me. ‘‘ You being an Eng-
lishman, I would have had you taken up on a charge of stealing.”

Blood rushed to my face. I lost control over myself. ‘“ Mr.
O’Brien,” I said, “I dare say you could have trumped up anything
against me. You are a very great scoundrel.”

“Why? Because I don’t lie about my motives, as you all do?
I would wish you to know that I would scorn to lie either to
myself or to you.”

I touched the haft of the sword on the table. It was lying with
the point his way.

“T had been thinking,” said I, in great heat, “ to propose to you
that we should fight it out between us two, man to man, rebel and
traitor as you have been.”

“The devil you have!” he muttered.

“ But really you are too much of a Picaroon. I think the
gallows should be your end.”

I gave reins to my exasperation, because I felt myself hopelessly
in his power. What he was driving at, I could not tell. I had
an intolerable sense of being as much at his mercy as though I had
been lying bound hand and foot on the floor. It gave me pleasure
to tell him what I thought. And, perhaps, I was not quite candid,

160 ROMANCE

either. Suppose I provoked him enough to fire his pistol at me.
He had been fingering the butt, absently, as we talked. He might
have missed me, and then. . . . Or he might have shot me dead.
But surely there was some justice in Cuba. It was clear enough
that he did not wish to kill me himself. Well, this was a desperate
strait; to force him to do something he did not wish to do, even at
the cost of my own life, was the only step left open to me to
thwart his purpose; the only thing I could do just then for the
furtherance of my mission to save Seraphina from his intrigues.
I was oppressed by the misery of it all. As to killing him as he
stood—if I could do it by being very quick with the old rapier
—my bringing up, my ideas, my very being, recoiled from it. I
had never taken a life. I. was very young. I was not used to
scenes of violence; and to begin like this in cold blood! Not only
my conscience, but my very courage faltered. ‘Truth to tell, I
was afraid; not for myself—I had the courage to die; but I was
afraid of the act. It was the unknown for me—for my nerve—for
my conscience. And then the Spanish gallows! That, too, re-
volted me. To kill him, and then kill myself. . . . No, I must
live. “ Two lives, one death,” she had said. . . . For a second
or two my brain reeled with horror; I was certainly losing my self-
possession. His voice broke upon that nightmare.

“It may be your lot, yet,” it said.

I burst into a nervous laugh. For a moment I could not stop
myself.

“T won’t murder you,” I cried.

To this he said astonishingly, “ Will you go to Mexico?”

It sounded like a joke. He was very serious. “I shall send
one of the schooners there on a little affair of mine. I can make
use of you. I give you this chance.”

It was as though he had thrown a bucketful of water over me.
I had an inward shiver, and became quite cool. It was his turn
now to let himself go.

It was a matter of delivering certain papers to the Spanish
Commandant in Timaulipas. There would be some employment
found for me with the Royal troops. I wasa relation of the Riegos.
And there came upon his voice a strange ardor; a swiftness into
his utterance. He walked away from the table; came back, and

:
.
|

PART THIRD 161

gazed into my face in a marked, expectant manner. He was not
prompted by any love for me, he said, and had an uncertain laugh.

My wits had returned to me wholly; and as he repeated “‘ No
love for you—no love for you,” I had the intuition that what in-
fluenced him was his love for Seraphina. I saw it. I read it in
the workings of his face. His eyes retained his good-humored
twinkle. He did not attach any importance to a boy and girl
affair; not at all—pah! The lady, naturally young, warm-
hearted, full of kindness. I mustn’t think. Ha, ha! A man of his
age, of course, understood. . . . No importance at all.

He walked away from the table trying to snap his fingers, and,
suddenly, he reeled; he reeled, as though he had been overcome by
the poison of his jealousy—as though a thought had stabbed him
to the heart. ‘There was an instant when the sight of that man
moved me more than anything I had seen of passionate suffering
before (and that was nothing), or since. He longed to kill me
—I felt it in the very air of the room; and he loved her too much
to dare. He laughed at me across the table. I had ridiculously
misunderstood a very proper and natural kindness of a girl with
not much worldly experience. He had known her from the earli-
est childhood.

“Take my word for it,” he stammered.

It seemed to me that there were tears in his eyes. A stiff smile
was parting his lips. He took up the pistol, and evidently not
knowing anything about it, looked with an air of curiosity into the
barrel.

It was time to think of making my career. That’s what I ought
to be thinking of at my age. “ At your age—at your age,” he re-
peated aimlessly. I was an Englishman. He hated me—and it

‘was easy to believe this, though he neither glared nor grimaced.
He smiled. He smiled continuously and rather pitifully. But
his devotion to a—a—person who. . . . His devotion was great
enough to overcome even that, even that. Did I understand? I
owed it to the-lady’s regard, which, for the rest, I had misunder-
stood—stupidly misunderstood.

“Well, at your age it’s excusable!”’ he mumbled. ‘“ A career
Piatiios spwer

“T see,” I said slowly. Young as I was, it was impossible to

162 ROMANCE

mistake his motives. Only a man of mature years, and really
possessed by a great passion—by a passion that had grown slowly,
till it was exactly as big as his soul—could have acted like this—
with that profound simplicity, with such resignation, with such
horrible moderation. But I wanted to find out more. “ And when ~
would you want me to go?” I asked, with a dissimulation of which
I would not have suspected myself capable a moment before. I
was maturing in the fire of love, of danger; in the lurid light of
life piercing through my youthful innocence.

“ Ah,” he said, banging the pistol onto the table hurriedly. “ At
once. To-night. Now.”

“ Without seeing anybody? ”

“ Without seeing . . . Oh, of course. In your own interest.”

He was very quiet now. “I thought you looked intelligent
enough,” he said, appearing suddenly very tired. ‘“‘I am glad you
see your position. You shall go far in the Royal service, on the
faith of Pat O’Brien, English as you are. I will make it my own
business for the sake of—the Riego family. ‘There is only one
little condition.”

He pulled out of his pocket a piece of paper, a pen, a traveling
inkstand. He looked the lawyer to the life; the Spanish family
lawyer grafted on an Irish attorney.

“You can’t see anybody. But you ought to write. Dojia Sera-
phina naturally would be interested. A cousin and ... I shall
explain to Don Balthasar, of course. . . . I will dictate: ‘Out
of regard for your future, and the desire for active life, of your
own will, you accept eagerly Sefior O’Brien’s proposition.’ She'll
understand.”

““ Oh, yes, she’ll understand,” I said.

“Yes. And that you will write of your safe arrival in Timau-
lipas. You must promise to write. Your word .. .”

“‘ By heavens, Sefior O’Brien!” I burst out with inexpressible
scorn, ‘I thought you meant your villains to cut my throat on
the passage. I should have deserved no better fate.”

He started. I shook with rage. A change had come upon both
of us as sudden as if we had been awakened by a violent noise.
For a time we did not speak a word. One look at me was enough
for him. He passed his hand over his forehead.

PART THIRD 163

“What devil’s in you, boy?” he said. “I seem to make nothing
but mistakes.”

He went to the loophole window, and, advancing his head, cried
out:

“The schooner does not sail to-night.”

He had some of his cut-throats posted under the window. I
-could not make out the reply he got; but after a while he said
distinctly, so as to be heard below:

“T give up that spy to you.” Then he came back, put the pistol
in his pocket, and said to me, “‘ Fool! I’ll make you long for death
yet.”

“You've given yourself away pretty well,” I said. “Some day
I shall unmask you. It will be my revenge on you for daring to
propose tome...”

“What?” he interrupted, over his shoulder. ‘“ You? Not
you—and I[’ll tell you why. It’s because dead men tell no tales.”’

He passed through the door—a back view of a dapper Spanish
lawyer, all in black, in a lofty frame. The calm, strolling footsteps
went away along the gallery. He turned the corner. The tapping
of his heels echoed in the patio, into whose blackness filtered the
first suggestion of the dawn.

CHAPTER V.

REMEMBER walking about the room, and thinking to my-’
_ self, “ This is bad, this is very bad; what shall I do now?”
A sort of mad meditation that in this meaningless way be-
came so tense as to positively frighten me. Then it occurred to me
that I could do nothing whatever at present, and I was soothed
by this sense of powerlessness, which, one would think, ought to
have driven me to distraction. I went to sleep ultimately, just as
a man sentenced to death goes to sleep, lulled in a sort of ghastly
way by the finality of his doom. Even when I awoke it kept me
steady, in a way. I washed, dressed, walked, ate, said “‘ Good-
morning, Cesar,” to the old major-domo I met in the gallery; ex-
changed grins with the negro boys under the gateway, and watched
the mules being ridden out barebacked by other nearly naked negro
boys into the sea, with great splashing of water and a noise of
voices. A small knot of men, unmistakably Lugarefos, stood on
the beach, also, watching the mules, and exchanging loud jocular
shouts with the blacks. Rio Medio, the dead, forsaken, and dese-
crated city, was lying, as bare as a skeleton, on the sands. They
were yellow; the bay was very blue, the wooded hills very
green.

After the mules had been ridden uproariously back to the stables,
wet and capering, and shaking their long ears, all the life of the
land seemed to take refuge in this vivid coloring. As I looked at
it from the outer balcony above the great gate, the small group
of Lugarefos turned about to look at the Casa Riego. They recog-
nized me, no doubt, and one of them flourished, threateningly, an
arm from under his cloak. I retreated indoors.

This was the only menacing sign, absolutely the only one sign
that marked this day. It was a day of pause. Seraphina did not
leave her apartments; Don Balthasar did not show himself ;
Father Antonio, hurrying towards the sick room, greeted me with
only a wave of the hand. I was not admitted to see Carlos; the

164

PART THIRD 165

nun came to the door, shook her head at me, and closed it gently in
my face. Castro, sitting on the floor not very far away, seemed
unaware of me in so marked a manner that it inspired me with
the idea of not taking the slightest notice of him. Now and then
the figure of a maid in white linen and bright petticoat flitted in
the upper gallery, and once I fancied I saw the black, rigid ea
of the duenna disappearing behind a pillar.

' Sefior O’Brien, old Cesar whispered, without looking at me, was
extremely occupied in the Cancillaria. His midday meal was
served him there. I had mine all alone, and then the sunny, heat-
laden stillness of siesta-time fell upon the Castilian dignity of the
‘house. .

I sank into a kind of reposeful belief in the work of accident.
Something would happen. I did not know how soon and how
atrociously my belief was to be justified. I exercised my ingenuity
in the most approved lover-fashion—in devising means how to get
secret speech with Seraphina. ‘The confounded silly maids fled
from my most distant appearance, as though I had the pest. I

-- was wondering whether I should not go simply and audaciously
and knock at her door, when I fancied I heard a scratching at mine.
It. was a very stealthy sound, quite capable of awakening my dor-
mant emotions.

I went to the door and listened. Then, opening it the merest
crack, I saw the inexplicable emptiness of the gallery. Castro, on

his hands and knees, startled me by whispering at my feet:

“Stand aside, sefior.”

He entered my room on all-fours, and waited till I got the door
closed before he stood up.

“‘ Even he may sleep sometimes,” he said. ‘“ And the balustrade
has hidden me.”

To see this little saturnine bandit, who generally stalked about
haughtily, as if the whole Casa belonged to him by right of fidelity,
crawl into my room like this was inexpressibly startling. He
shook the folds of his cloak, and dropped his hat on the floor.

“Still, it is better so. “The very women of the house are not
safe,” he said. ‘‘ Sefior, I have no mind to be delivered to the
English for hanging. But I have not been admitted to see Don
Carlos, and, therefore, I must make my report to you. These arc

166 ROMANCE

Don Carlos’ orders. ‘Serve him, Castro, when I am dead, as if
my soul had passed into his body.’ ”

He nodded sadly. ‘“Si/ But Don Carlos is a friend to me
and you—you.”’ He shook his head, and drew me away from the
door. ‘“ Two Lugarefos,”’ he said, ““ Manuel and another one, did
go last night, as directed by the friar ’—he supposed—*“ to meet
the Juez in the bush outside Rio Medio.”

I had guessed that much, and told him of Manuel’s behavior
under my window. How did they know my chamber?

“ Bad, bad,” muttered Castro. “La Chica told her lover, no
doubt.” He hissed, and stamped. his foot.

She was pretty, but flighty. The lover was a silly boy of decent,
Christian parents, who was always hanging about in the low
villages. No matter.

What he could not understand was why some boats should have
been held in readiness till nearly the morning to tow a schooner
outside. Manuel came along at dawn, and dismissed the crews.
They had separated, making a great noise on the beach, and yelling,
“ Death to the Inglez.”

I cleared up that point for him. He told me that O’Brien
had the duenna called to his room that morning. Nothing had
been heard outside, but the woman came out staggering, with her
hand on the wall. He had terrified her. God knows what he

had said to her. The widow—as Castro called her—had a son, an — i

escrivano in one of the Courts of Justice. No doubt it was that.

“There it is, sefior,” murmured Castro, scowling all round,
as if every wall of the room was an enemy. ‘“ He holds all the
people in his hand in some way. Even I must be cautious, though
I am a humble, trusted friend of the Casa!”

“What harm could he do you?” I asked.

“He is civil to me. Amigo Castro here, and Amigo Castro
there. Bah! The devil, alone, is his friend! He could deliver
me to justice, and get my life sworn away. He could Quien
sabe? What need he care what he does—a man that can get abso-
lution from the archbishop himself if he likes.”

He meditated. “No! there is only one remedy for hima ” He
tiptoed to my ear. ‘‘ The knife! ”

He made a pass in the air with his blade, and I remembered

Castro, on his hands and knees, startled me by whispering at
my feet : “ Stand aside, senor”

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PART THIRD 167

vividly the cockroach he had impaled with such accuracy on board
the Thames. His baneful glance reminded me of his murderous
capering in the steerage, when he had thought that the only remedy
for me was the knife.

He went to the loop-hole, and passed the steel thoughtfully on
the stone edge. I had not moved.

“The knife; but what would you have? Before, when I talked
of this to Don Carlos, he only laughed at me. That was his way
in’ matters of importance. Now they will not let me come in to
him. He is too near God—and the sefiorita—why, she is too near
the saints for all the great nobility of her spirit. But, gue dia-
bleria, when I—in my devotion—opened my mouth to her I saw
some of that spirit in her eyes. . . .”

There was a slight irony in his voice. “No! Me—Castro! to
be told that an English sefiora would have dismissed me forever
from her presence for such a hint. ‘ Your Excellency,’ I said,
‘ deign, then, to find it good that I should avoid giving offense to
that man. It is not my desire to run my neck into the iron
collar.’”

He looked at me fixedly, as if expecting me to make a sign, then
‘shrugged his shoulders.

“ Bueno. You see this? Then look to it yourself, sefior. You
are to me even as Don Carlos—all except for the love. No Eng-
lish body is big enough to receive his soul. No friend will be left
that would risk his very honor of a noble for a man like Tomas
Castro. Let me warn you not to leave the Casa, even if a shining
angel stood outside the gate and called you by name. The gate is
barred, now, night and day. I have dropped a hint to Cesar, and
that old African knows more than the sefior would suppose. I
cannot tell how soon I may have the opportunity to talk to you
again.”

He peeped through the crack of the door, then slipped out,
suddenly falling at once on his hands and knees, so as to be hidden
by the stone balustrade from anybody in the patio. He, too, did
not think himself safe.

Early in the evening I descended into the court, and Father
Antonio, walking up and down the patio with his eyes on his brevi-
ary, muttered to me:

168 ROMANCE

“ Sit on this chair,” and went on without stopping.

I took a chair near the marble rim of the basin with its border
of English flowers, its splashing thread of water. The goldfishes
that had been lying motionless, with their heads pointing different
ways, glided into a bunch to the fall of my shadow, waiting for
crumbs of bread.

Father Antonio, his head down, and the open breviary under his
nose, brushed my foot with the skirt of his cassock.

“ Have you any plan?”

When he came back, walking very slowly, I said, “ None.”

At his next turn I pronounced rapidly, “I should like to see
Carlos.”

He frowned over the edge of the book.

I understood that he refused to let me in. And, after all, why
should I disturb that dying man? ‘The news about him was that
he felt stronger that day. But he was preparing for eternity.
Father Antonio’s business was to save souls. I felt horribly crushed
and alone. The priest asked, hardly moving his lips:

“What do you trust to?”

I had the time to meditate my reply. ‘Tell Carlos I think of
escape by sea.”

He made a little sign of assent, turned off towards the staircase,
and went back to the sick room.

“The folly of it,’ I thought. How could I think of it? Es-
cape where? I dared not even show myself outside the Casa. My
safety within depended on old Cesar more than on anybody else.
He had the key of the gate, and the gate was practically the only
thing between me and a miserable death at the hands of the first
rufhan I met outside. And with the thought I seemed to stifle in
that patio open to the sky. ‘

That gate seemed to cut off the breath of life from me. I was
there, as if in a trap. Should I—I asked myself—try to enlighten
Don Balthasar? Why not? He would understand me. I would
tell him that in his own town, as he always called Rio Medio, there
lurked assassination for his guest. That would move him if any-
thing could.

He was then walking with O’Brien after dinner, as he had
walked with me on the day of my arrival. Only Seraphina had

PART THIRD 169

not appeared, and we three men had sat out the silent meal
alone.

They stopped as I approached, and Don Balthasar listened to
me benignantly. “Ah, yes, yes! Times have changed.” But
there was no reason for alarm. ‘There were some undesirable
persons. Had they not arrived lately? He turned to O’Brien,
who stood by, in readiness to resume the walk, and answered, “ Yes,
quite lately. Very undesirable,” in a matter-of-fact tone. The
excellent Don Patricio would take measures to have them removed,
the old man soothed me. But it was not really dangerous for
anyone to go out. Again he addressed O’Brien, who only smiled
gently, as much as to say, ‘“ What an absurdity.” I must not
forget, continued the old man, the veneration for the very name
of Riego that still, thank Heaven, survived in these godless and
revolutionary times in the Riegos’ own town. .

He straightened his back a little, looking at me with dignity,
and then glanced at the other, who inclined his head affirmatively.
The utter and complete hopelessness of the position appalled me
for a moment. ‘The old man had not put foot outside his door for
years, not even to go to church. Father Antonio said Mass for
him every day in the little chapel next the dining room. When
O’Brien—for his own purposes, and the better to conceal his own
connection with the Rio Medio piracies—had persuaded him to go
to Jamaica officially, he had been rowed in state to the ship waiting
outside. For many years now it had been impossible to enlighten
him as to the true condition of affairs. He listened to people’s
talk as though it had been children’s prattle. I have related how
he received Carlos’ denunciations. If one insisted, he would draw
himself up in displeasure. But in his decay he had preserved a
great dignity, a grave firmness that intimidated me a little.

I did not, of course, insist that evening, and, after giving me my
dismissal in a gesture of blessing, he resumed his engrossing con-
versation with O’Brien. It related to the services commemorating
his wife’s death, those services that, once every twelve months,
draped in black all the churches in Havana. A hundred masses, no
less, had to be said that day; a distribution of alms had to be made.
O’Brien was charged with all the arrangements, and I caught, as
they crept past me up and down the patio, snatches of phrases re-

a

170 ROMANCE

lating to this mournful function, when all the capital was invited
to pray for the soul of the illustrious lady. The priest of the church
of San Antonio had said this and that; the grand vicar of the ~
diocese had made difficulties about something; however, by the
archbishop’s special grace, no less than three altars would be draped
in the cathedral.

I saw Don Balthasar smile with an ineffable satisfaction; he
thanked O’Brien for his zeal, and seemed to lean more familiarly
on his arm. His voice trembled with eagerness. “ And now, my
excellent Don Patricio, as to the number of candles. . . .”

I stood for a while as if rooted to the spot, overwhelmed by my
insignificance. O’Brien never once looked my way. ‘Then, hang-
ing my head, I went slowly up the white staircase towards my
room.

Cesar, going his rounds along the gallery, shuffled his silk-clad
shanks smartly between two young negroes balancing lanthorns
suspended on the shafts of their halberds. ‘That little group had
a medieval and outlandish aspect. Cesar carried a bunch of keys
in one hand, his staff of office in the other. He stood aside, in his
maroon velvet and gold lace, holding the three-cornered hat under
his arm, bowing his gray, woolly head—the most venerable and
deferential of major-domos. His attendants, backing against the
wall, grounded their halberds heavily at my approach.

He stepped out to intercept me, and, with great discretion,
“Sefior, a word,” he said in his subdued voice. “‘ A moment ago
I have been called within the door of our sefiorita’s apartments.
She has given me this for your worship, together with many com-
pliments. It is a seal. The sefior will understand.”

I took it; it was a tiny seal with her monogram on it. “ Yes,”
I said.

“And Sefiorita Dofia Seraphina has charged me to repeat ’—
he made a stealthy sign, as if to counteract an evil influence
—‘ the words, ‘Two lives—one death.’ The sefior will under-
stand.”

“Yes,” I said, looking away with a pang at my heart.

He touched my elbow. ‘“ And to trust Cesar. Seftor, I dandled
her when she was quite little. Let me most earnestly urge upon
your worship not to go near the windows, especially if there is

PART THIRD 171

light in your worship’s room. Evil men are gazing upon the house,
and I have seen myself the glint of a musket at the end of the
street. The moon grows fast, too. The sefiorita begs you to trust
Cesar.”

“Are there many men? ”’ I asked.

“Not many in sight; I have seen only one. But by signs, open
to a man of my experience, I suspect many more to be about.”
Then, as I looked down on the ground, he added_parenthetically,
“They are poor shots, one and all, lacking the very firmness of
manhood necessary to discharge a piece with a good aim. Still,
senior, I am ordered to entreat you to be cautious. Strange it is that
to-night, from the great revelry at the Aldea Bajo, one might think
they had just visited an English ship outside.”

A ship! a ship! of any sort. But how to get out of the Casa?
Murder forbade me even as much as to look out of the windows.
Was there a ship outside? Cesar was positive there was not—
not since I had arrived. Besides, the empty sea itself was un-
attainable, it seemed.

_I pressed the seal to my lips. ‘ Tell the sefiorita how I received
her gift,” I said; and the old negro inclined his head lower still.
“Tell her that as the letters of her name are graved on this, so
are all the words she has spoken graven on my heart.”

They went away busily, the lanthorns swinging about the ax-
heads of the halberds, Cesar’s staff tapping the stones.

I shut my door, and buried my face in the pillows of the state
bed. My mental anguish was excessive; action, alone, could re-
lieve it. I had been battling with my thoughts like a man fighting
with shadows. I could see no issue to such a struggle, and 1
prayed for something tangible to encounter—something that one
could overcome or go under to. I must have fallen suddenly
asleep, because there was a lion in front of me. It lashed its
tail, and beyond the indistinct agitation of the brute I saw Sera-
phina. I tried to shout to her; no voice came out of my throat.
And the lion produced a strange noise; he opened his jaws like a
door. I sat up.

It was like a change of dream. A glare filled my eyes. In the
wide doorway ot my room, in a group of attendants, I saw a figure
in a short black cloak standing, hat on head, and an arm out-

172 ROMANCE

stretched. It was Don Balthasar. He held himself more erect
than I had ever seen him before. Stifled sounds of weeping, a
vast, confused rumor of lamentations, running feet and slamming
doors, came from behind him; his aged, dry voice, much firmer
and very distinct, was speaking to me.

“You are summoned to attend the bedside of Don Carlos Riego
at the hour of death, to help his soul struggling on the threshold
of eternity with your prayers—as a kinsman and a friend.”

A great draught swayed the lights about that black and courtly
figure. All the windows and doors of the palace had been flung
open for the departure of the struggling soul. Don Balthasar
turned; the group of attendants was gone in a moment, with a
tramp of feet and jostling of lights in the long gallery.

I ran out after them. A wavering glare came from under the
arch, and, through the open gate, I saw the bulky shape of the
bishop’s coach waiting outside in the moonlight. A strip of cloth
fell from step to step down the middle of the broad white stairs.
The staircase was brilliantly lighted, and quite empty. ‘The house-
hold was crowding the upper galleries; the sobbing murmurs of
their voices fell into the deserted patio. The strip of crimson cloth
laid for the bishop ran across it from the arch of the stairway to
the entrance.

The door of Carlos’ room stood wide open; I saw the many
candles on a table covered with white linen, the side of the big
bed, surpliced figures moving within the room. ‘There was the
ringing of small bells, and sighing groans from the kneeling forms
in the gallery through which I was making my way slowly.

Castro appeared at my side suddenly. “‘ Sefior,” he began, with
saturnine stoicism, “he is dead. I have seen battlefields—— ”’
His voice broke.

I saw, through the large portal of the death-chamber, Don
Balthasar and Seraphina standing at the foot of the bed; the bowed
heads of two priests; the bishop, a tiny old man, in his vestments;
and Father Antonio, burly and motionless, with his chin in his
hand, as if left behind after leading that soul to the very gate of
Eternity. All about me, women and men were crossing them-
selves; and Castro, who for a moment had covered his eyes with
his hand, touched my elbow.

"en

PART THIRD 17.3

“ And you live,” he said, with somber emphasis; then, warningly,
“You are in great danger now.”

I looked around, as if expecting to see an uplifted knife. I saw
only a lot of people—household negroes and the women—rising
from their knees. Below, the patio was empty.

“The house is defenseless,” Castro continued.

We heard tumultuous voices under the gate.

O’Brien appeared in the doorway of Carlos’ room with an at-
tentive and dismayed expression on his face. I do not really think
he had anything to do with what then took place. He meant to
have me killed outside; but the rabble, excited by Manuel’s in-
flammatory speeches, had that night started from the villages below
with the intention of clamoring for my life. Many of their
women were with them. Some of the Lugarefos carried torches,
others had pikes; most of them, however, had nothing but their
long knives. They came in a disorderly, shouting mob along the
beach, intending this not for an attack, but as a simple demonstra-
tion.

The sight of the open gate struck them with wonder. The
bishop’s coach blocked the entrance, and for a time they hesitated,
awed by the mystery of the house and by the rites going on in
there. Then two or three bolder spirits stole closer. The bishop’s
people, of course, did not think of offering any resistance. The
very defenselessness of the house restrained the mob for a while.
A few more men from outside ran in. Several women began to
clamor scoldingly to them to bring the Inglez out. Then the men,
encouraging each other in their audacity, advanced further under
the arch.

A solitary black, the only guard left at the gate, shouted at
them, “ Arria! Go back.” It had no effect. More of them
crowded in, though, of course, the greater part of that mob re-
mained outside. The black rolled big eyes. He could not stop
them; he did not like to leave his post; he dared not fire. “Go
back; go back,” he repeated.

“ Not without the Inglez,”’ they answered.

The tumult we had heard arose when the Lugarefos sud-
denly fell upon the sentry, and wrenched his musket from him.

This man, when disarmed, ran away. I saw him running across

174 ROMANCE

the patio, on the crimson pathway, to the foot of the staircase.
His shouting, ‘‘ The Lugarefios have risen!” broke upon the hush
of mourning. Father Antonio made a brusque movement, and
Seraphina sent a startled glance in my direction.

The cloistered court, with its marble basin and a jet of water
in the center, remained empty for a moment after the negro had
run across; a growing clamor penetrated into it. In the midst
of it I heard O’Brien’s voice saying, ‘“‘ Why don’t they shut the
gate?’ Immediately afterwards a woman in the gallery cried out
in surprise, and I saw the Lugarefios pour into the patio.

For a time that motley group of bandits stood in the light, as if

‘intimidated by the great dignity of the house, by the mysterious
prestige of the Casa, whose interior, probably, none of them had
ever seen before. They gazed about silently, as if surprised to find
themselves there.

It looked as if they would have retired if they had not caught
sight of me. A murmur of “ the Imglez” arose at once. By that
time the household negroes had occupied the staircase with what
weapons they could find upstairs. .

Father Antonio pushed past O’Brien out -of the room, and shook
his arms over the balustrade.

“Impious men,” he cried, ‘ begone from this house of death.”
His eyes flashed at the rufhans, who stared stupidly from below.

“Give us the Inglez,” they growled.

Seraphina, from within, cried, “ Juan.” I was then near the
door, but not within the room.

“The Inglez! ‘The heretic! The traitor!” came in sullen, sub-
dued mutter. A hoarse, reckless voice shouted, ‘‘ Give him to us,
and we shall go!”

“You are putting in danger all the lives in this house! ” O’Brien
hissed at me. “ Sefiorita, pray do not.” He stood in the way of
Seraphina, who wished to come out.

“Tt is you!” she cried. “It is you! It is your voice, it is
your hand, it is your iniquity! ”

He was confounded by her vehemence.

“Who brought him here?” he stammered. ‘Am I to find one
of that accursed brood forever in my way? I take him to witness
that for your sake i

PART THIRD 175

A formidable roar, “‘ Throw us down the Inglez!” filled the
patio. ‘They were gaining assurance down there; and the ferocious
clamoring of the mob outside came faintly upon our ears.

O’Brien barred the way. Don Balthasar leaned on his daugh-
ter’s arm—she very straight, with tears still on her face and indig-
nation in her eye, he bowed, and with his immovable fine features
set in the calmness of age. Behind that group there were two
priests, one with a scared, white face, another, black-browed, with
an exalted and fanatical aspect. ‘The light of the candles from the
improvised altar fell on the bishop’s small, bald head, emerging

with a patient droop from the wide spread of his cope, as though
he had been inclosed in a portable gold shrine. He was ready
to go. . ,

Don Balthasar, who seemed to have heard nothing, as if sud-
denly waking up to his duty, left his daughter, and muttering to
O’Brien, “ Let me precede the bishop,”’ came out, bare-headed, into
the gallery. Father Antonio had turned away, and his heavy hand
fell on O’Brien’s shoulder.

““ Have you no heart, no reverence, no decency?” he said. “In
the name of everything you respect, I call upon you to stop this
sacrilegious outbreak.”

O’Brien shook off the priestly hand, and fixed his eyes upon
Seraphina. I happened to be looking at his face; he seemed to be
ready to go out of his mind. His jealousy, the awful torment of
soul and body, made him motionless and speechless.

Seeing Don Balthasar appear by the balustrade, the ruffians
below had become silent for a while. His aged, mechanical voice
was heard asking distinctly: .

“What do these people want?”

Seraphina, from within the room, said aloud, “ They are clamor-
ing for the life of our guest.” She looked at O’Brien contemp-
tuously, “‘ They are doing this to please you.”

“ Before God, I have nothing to do with this.”

It was true enough, he had nothing to do with this outbreak;
and I believe he would have interfered, but, in his dismay at
having lost himself in the eyes of Seraphina, in his rage against
myself, he did not know how to act. No doubt he had been de-
ceiving himself as to his position with Seraphina. He was a man

176 ROMANCE

who lived on illusions, and was inclined to put implicit faith in his
wishes. His desire of revenge on me, the downfall of his hopes
(he could no longer deceive himself), a desperate striving of
thought for their regaining, his impulse towards the impossible—
all these emotions paralyzed his will.

Don Balthasar beckoned to me.

“Don’t go near him,” said O’Brien, in a thick, mumbling voice.
“T shall I must is

I put him aside. Don, Balthasar took my arm. “ Misguided
populace,” he whispered. ‘“‘ They have been a source of sorrow to
me lately. But this wicked folly is incredible. I shall call upon”
them to come to their senses. My voice Y

The court below was strongly lighted, so that I saw the bearded,
bronzed, wild faces of the Lugarefos looking up. We, also, were
strongly shown by the light of the doorway behind us, and by the
torches burning in the gallery.

That morning, in my helplessness, I had come to put my trust
in accident—in some accident—I hardly knew of what nature—
my own death, perhaps—that would find a solution for my respon-
sibilities, put an end to my tormenting thoughts. And now the
accident came with a terrible swiftness, at which I shudder to this
day.

We were looking down into the patio. Don Balthasar had just
said, “ You are nowhere as safe as by my side,” when I noticed a
Lugarefio withdrawing himself from the throng about the basin.
His face came to me familiarly. He was the pirate with the broken
nose, who had had a taste of my fist. He had the sentry’s musket
on his shoulder, and was slinking away towards the gate.

Don Balthasar extended his hand over the balustrade, and there
was a general movement of recoil below. I wondered why the
slaves on the stairs did not charge and clear the patio; but I sup-
pose with such a mob outside there was a natural hesitation in
bringing the position to an issue. The Lugarefios were muttering,
“Look at the Inglez!” then cried out together, ‘‘ Excellency, give

p72.

up this Inglez!

Don Balthasar seemed ten years younger suddenly. I had never
seen him so imposingly erect.

“Tnsensate!”’ he began, without any anger.

PART THIRD 177

“ He’s going to fire!” yelled Castro’s voice somewhere in the
gallery. i

I saw a red dart in the shadow of the gate. The broken-nosed
pirate had fired at me. The report, deadened in the vault, hardly
reached my ears. Don Balthasar’s arm.seemed to swing me back.
Then I felt him lean heavily on my shoulder. I did not know
what had happened till I heard him say:

“Pray for me, gentlemen.”

Father Antonio received him in his arms.

For a second after the shot, the most dead silence prevailed in
the court. It was broken by an affrighted howl below: and Sera-
phina’s voice cried piercingly:

“ Father! ”

The priest, dropping on one knee, sustained the silvery head,
with its thin features already calm in death. Don Balthasar had
saved my life; and his daughter flung herself upon the body.
O’Brien pressed his hands to his temples, and remained motion-
less.

I saw the bishop, in his stiff cope, creep up to the group with
the motion of a tortoise. And, for a moment, his quavering
voice pronouncing the absolution was the only sound in the
house.

Then a most fiendish noise broke out below. The negroes had
charged, and the Lugarefos, struck with terror at the unforeseen
catastrophe, were rushing helter-skelter through the gate. The
screaming of the maids was frightful. They ran up and down the
galleries with their hair streaming. O’Brien passed me by swiftly,
muttering like a madman.

I, also, got down into the courtyard in time to strike some heavy
blows under the gateway; but I don’t know who it was that thrust
into my hands the musket which I used as a club. The sudden
burst of shrieks, the cries of terror under the vault of the gate,
yells of rage and consternation, silenced the mob outside. The
Lugarefios, appalled at what had happened, shouted most pitifully.
They squeaked like the vermin they were. I brought down the
clubbed musket; two went down. Of two I am sure. The rush
of flying feet swept through between the walls, bearing me along.
For a time a black stream of men eddied in the moonlight round

178 ROMANCE

the bishop’s coach, like a torrent breaking round a boulder. The
great heavy machine rocked, mules plunged, torches swayed.

The archway had been cleared. Outside, the slaves were form-
ing in the open space before the Casa, while Cesar, with a few
others, labored to swing the heavy gates to. Hats, torn cloaks,
knives strewed the flagstones, and the dim light of the lamps,
fastened high up on the walls, fell on the faces of three men
stretched out on their backs. Another, lying huddled up in a heap,
got up suddenly and rushed out.

The thought of Seraphina clinging to the lifeless body of her
father upstairs came to me; it came over me in horror, and I let
the musket fall out of my hand. A silence like the silence of
despair reigned in the house. She would hate me now. I felt
as if I could walk out and give myself up, had it not been for the
sight of O’Brien.

He was leaning his shoulders against the wall in the posture
of a man suddenly overcome by a deadly disease. No one was
looking at us. It came to me that he could not have many illusions
left to him now. He looked up wearily, saw me, and, waking
up at once, thrust his hands into the pockets of his breeches. I
thought of his pistol. No wild hope of love would prevent him,
now, from killing me outright. The fatal shot that had put an
end to Don Balthasar’s life must have brought to him an awaken-
ing worse than death. I made one stride, caught him by both arms
swiftly, and pinned him to the wall with all my strength. We
struggled in silence.

I found him much more vigorous than I had expected; but, at
the same time, I felt at once that I was more than a match for
him. We did not say a word. We made no noise. But, in our
struggle, we got away from the wall into the middle of the gate-
way. I dared not let go of his arms to take him by the throat. He
only tried to jerk and wrench himself away. Had he succeeded,
it would have been death for me. We never moved our feet from
the spot fairly in the middle of the archway, but nearer to the
gate than to the patio. The slaves, formed outside, guarded the
bishop’s coach, and I do not know that there was anybody else
actually with us under the vault of the entrance. We glared into
each other’s faces, and the world seemed very still around us. I

PART THIRD . 179

felt in me a passion—not of hate, but of determination to be done
with him; and from his face it was possible to guess his suffering,
his despair, or his rage.

In the midst of our straining I heard a sibilant sound. I de-
tached my eyes from his; his struggles redoubled, and, behind him,
stealing in towards us from the court, black on the strip of crimson
cloth, I saw Tomas Castro. He flung his cloak back. The light
of the lanthorn under the keystone of the arch glimmered feebly
on the blade of his maimed arm. He made a discreet and blood-
curdling gesture to me with the other.

How could I hold a man so that he should be stabbed from
behind in my arms? Castro was running up swiftly, his cloak
opening like a pair of sable wings. Collecting all my strength, I
forced O’Brien round, and we swung about in a flash. Now he
had his back to the gate. My effort seemed to have uprooted him.
I felt him give way all over.

As soon as our position had changed, Castro checked himself,
and stepped aside into the shadow of the guardroom doorway.
I don’t think O’Brien had been aware of what had been going on.
His strength was overborne by mine. I drove him backwards.
His eyes blinked wildly. He bared his teeth. He resisted, as
though I had been forcing him over the brink of perdition. His
feet clung to the flagstones. I shook him till his head rolled.

“Viper brood!” he spluttered.

“Out you go! ”’ I hissed.

I had found nothing heroic, nothing romantic to say—nothing
that would express my desperate resolve to rid the world of his
presence. All I could do was to fling him out. The Casa Riego
was all my world—a world full of great pain, great mourning,
and love. I saw him pitch headlong under the wheels of the
bishop’s enormous carriage. ‘The black coachman who had sat
aloft, unmoved through all the tumult, in his white stockings and
three-cornered hat, glanced down from his high box. And the two
parts of the gate came together with a clang of ironwork and a
heavy crash that seemed as loud as thunder under that vault.

CHAPTER VI

OT even in memory am I willing to live over again those

three days when Father Antonio, the old major-domo,

and myself would meet each other in the galleries, in the
patio, in the empty rooms, moving in the stillness of the house
with heavy hearts and desolate eyes, which seemed to demand,
“What is there to do?”

Of course, precautions were taken against the Lugarefios. They
were besieging the Casa from afar. They had established a sort of
camp at the end of the street, and they prowled about amongst
the old, barricaded houses in their pointed hats, in their rags and
finery; women, with food, passed constantly between the villages
and the panic-stricken town; there were groups on the beach; and
one of the schooners had been towed down the bay, and was lying,
now, moored stem and stern opposite the great gate. ‘They did
nothing whatever active against us. They lay around and watched,
as if in pursuance of a plan traced by a superior authority. They
were watching for me. But when, by some mischance, they burnt
the roof off the outbuildings that were at some distance from the
Casa, their chiefs sent up a deputation of three, with apologies.
Those men came unarmed, and, as it were, under Castro’s protec-
tion, and absolutely whimpered with regrets before Father An-
tonio. ‘“‘ Would his reverence kindly intercede with the most
noble sefiorita? . . .”

“Silence! Dare not pronounce her name!” thundered the
good priest, snatching away his hand, which they attempted to grab
and kiss.

I, in the background, noted their black looks at me, even as they
cringed. The man who had fired the shot, they said, had expired
of his wounds ofter great torments. ‘Their other dead had been
thrust out of the gate before. A long fellow, with slanting eye-
brows and a scar on his cheek, called El Rechado, tried to inform
Cesar, confidentially, that Manuel, his friend, had been opposed to

180

PART THIRD 181

any encroachment of the Casa’s offices, only: ‘That Do-
mingo—— ” |

As soon as we discovered what was their object (their apparent
object, at any rate), they were pushed out of the gate unceremo-
niously,—still protesting their love and respect,—by the Riego
negroes. Castro followed them out again, after exchanging a
meaning look with Father Antonio. ‘To live in the two camps,
as it were, was a triumph of Castro’s diplomacy, of his saturnine
mysteriousness. He kept us in touch with the outer world, coming
in under all sorts of pretenses, mostly with messages from the
bishop, or escorting the priests that came in relays to pray by the
bodies of the two last Riegos lying in state, side by side, rigid in
black velvet and white lace ruffles, on the great bed dragged out
into the middle of the room.

Two enormous wax torches in iron stands flamed and guttered
at the door; a black cloth draped the emblazoned shields; and
the wind from the sea, blowing through the open casement, inclined
all together the flames of a hundred candles, pale in the sunlight,
extremely ardent in the night. The murmur of prayers for these
souls went on incessantly; I have it in my ears now. ‘There would
be always some figure of the household kneeling in prayer at the
door; or the old major-domo would come in to stand at the foot,
motionless for a time; or, through the open door, I would see the
cassock of Father Antonio, flung on his knees, with his forehead
resting on the edge of the bed, his hands clasped above his ton-
sure.

Apart from what was necessary for defense, all the life of the
house seemed stopped. Not a woman appeared; all the doors were
closed; and the numbing desolation of a great bereavement was
symbolized by Don Balthasar’s chair in the patio, which had re-
mained lying overturned in full view of every part of the house,
till I could bear the sight no longer, and asked Cesar to have it
put away. “‘ Si, sefior,” he said deferentially, and a few tears ran
suddenly down his withered cheeks. ‘The English flowers had
been trampled down; an unclean hat floated on the basin, now
here, now there, frightening the goldfish from one side to the other..

And Seraphina. It seems not fitting that I should write of her
in these days. I hardly dared let my thoughts approach her, but

182 ; ROMANCE.

I had to think of her all the time. Her sorrow was the very soul
of the house.

Shortly after I had thrown O’Brien out the bishop had left, and
then I learned from Father Antonio that she had been carried away
to her own apartments in a fainting condition. ‘The excellent
man was almost incoherent with distress and trouble of mind, and
walked up and down, his big head drooping on his capacious chest,
the joints of his entwined fingers cracking. I had met him in the
gallery, as I was making my way back to Carlos’ room in anxiety
and fear, and we had stepped aside into a large saloon, seldom
used, above the gateway. I shall never forget the restless, swift
pacing of that burly figure, while, feeling utterly crushed, now the
excitement was over, I leaned against a console. Three long
bands of moonlight fell, chilly bluish, into the vast room, with its
French Empire furniture stiffly arranged about the white walls.

“ And that man?” he asked me at last.

“ T could have killed him with my own hands,” I said. ‘I was
the stronger. He had his pistols on him, I am certain, only I could
not be a party to an assassination. . . .”

“Oh, my son, it would have been no sin to have exerted the
strength which God had blessed you with,” he interrupted. ‘“‘ We
are allowed to kill venomous snakes, wild beasts; we are given our
strength for that, our intelligence. . . .” And all the time he
walked about, wringing his hands.

“Yes, your reverence,” I said, feeling the most miserable and
helpless of lovers on earth; “‘ but there was no time. If I had not
thrown him out, Castro would have stabbed him in the back in my
very hands. And that would have been ” Words failed me.

I had been obliged not only to desist myself, but to save his
life from Castro. I had been obliged! There had been no option.
Murderous enemy as he was, it seemed to me I should never have
slept a wink all the rest of my life.

“Yes, it is just, it is just. What else? Alas!” Father An-
tonio repeated disconnectedly. ‘‘ Those feelings implanted in your
breast: I have served my king, as you know, in my sacred
calling, but in the midst of war, which is the outcome of the wicked-
ness natural to our fallen state. I understand; I understand. It
may be that God, in his mercy, did not wish the death of that

PART THIRD 183

evil man—not yet, perhaps. Let. us submit. He may repent.”
He snuffled aloud. “I think of that poor child,” he said through
his handkerchief. Then, pressing my arm with his vigorous fingers,
he murmured, ‘“‘I fear for her reason.”

It may be imagined in what state I spent the rest of that sleep-
less night. At times, the thought that I was the cause of her
bereavement nearly drove me mad.

And there was the danger, too.

But what else could I have done? My whole soul had recoiled
from the horrible help Castro was bringing us at the point of his
blade. No love could demand from me such a sacrifice.

Next day Father Antonio was calmer. To my trembling in-
quiries he said something consolatory as to the blessed relief of
tears. When not praying fervently in the mortuary chamber, he
could be seen pacing the gallery in a severe aloofness of meditation.
In the evening he took me by the arm, and, without a word, led
me up a narrow and winding staircase. He pushed a small door,
and we stepped out on a flat part of the roof, flooded in moonlight.

‘The points of land dark with the shadows of trees and broken
ground clasped the waters of the bay, with a body of shining white

“mists in the center; and, beyond, the vast level of the open sea,
touched with glitter, appeared infinitely somber under the lumi-
nous sky.

We stood back from the parapet, and Father Antonio threw out
a thick arm at the splendid trail of the moon upon the dark water.

“This is the only way,” he said.

He had a warm heart under his black robe, a simple and coura-
geous comprehension of life, this priest who was very much of a —
man; a certain grandeur of resolution when it was a matter of
what he regarded as his principal office.

“This is the way,” he repeated.

Never before had I been struck so much by the gloom, the vast-
ness, the emptiness of the open sea, as on that moonlight night.
And Father Antonio’s deep voice went on:

“My son, since God has made use of the nobility of your heart
to save that sinner from an unshriven death ze

He paused to mutter, “ Inscrutable! inscrutable!” to himself,
sighed, and then:

184 ROMANCE

“Let us rejoice,” he continued, with a completely unconcealed
resignation, ‘that you have been the chosen instrument to afford
him an opportunity to repent.” ‘

His tone changed suddenly.

“ He will never repent,” he said with great force. “‘ He has
sold his soul and body to the devil, like these magicians of old
of whom we have records.”

He clicked his tongue with compunction, and regretted his want
of charity. It was proper for me, however, as a man having to
deal with a world of wickedness and error, to act as though I did
not believe in his repentance.

“The hardness of the human heart is incredible; I have seen
the most appalling examples.” And the priest meditated. ‘“ He
is not a common criminal, however,” he added profoundly.

It was true. He was a man of illusions, ministering to passions
that uplifted him above the fear of consequences. Young as I was,
I understood that, too. ‘There was no safety for us in Cuba while
he lived. Father Antonio nodded dismally.

“Where to go?” I asked. “ Where to turn? Whom can we
trust? In whom can we repose the slightest confidence? Where
can we look for hope?”

Again the padre pointed to the sea. The hopeless aspect of its
moonlit and darkling calm struck me so forcibly that I did not
even ask kaw he proposed to get us out there. I only made a
gesture of discouragement. Outside the Casa, my life was not
worth ten minutes’ purchase. And how could I risk her there?
How could I propose to her to follow me to an almost certain
death? What could be the issue of such an adventure? How
could we hope to devise such secret means of getting away as
would prevent the Lugarefios pursuing us? I should perish, then,
and she...

Father Antonio seemed to lose his self-control suddenly.

“Yes,” he cried. “The sea is a perfidious element, but what
is it to the blind malevolence of men?” He gripped my shoulder.
“The risk to her life,” he cried; “ the risk of drowning, of hunger,
of thirst—that is all the sea can do. I do not think of that. I
love her too much. She is my very own spiritual child; and I tell
you, sefior, that the unholy intrigue of that man endangers not:

PART THIRD 185

her happiness, not her fortune alone—it endangers her innocent
soul itself.”

A profound silence ensued. I remembered that his business was
to save souls. This old man loved that young girl whom he had
watched growing up, defenseless in her own home; he loved her
with a great strength of paternal instinct that no vow of celibacy
can extinguish, and with a heroic sense of his priestly duty. And
I was not to say him nay. The sea—so be it. It was easier to
think of her dead than to think of her immured; it was better that
she should be the victim of the sea than of evil men; that she should
be lost with me than to me.

Father Antonio, with that naive sense of the poetry of the sky
he possessed, apostrophized the moon, the “ gentle orb,” as he
called it, which ought to be weary of looking at the miseries of the
earth. His immense shadow on the leads seemed to fling two vast
fists over the parapet, as if to strike at the enemies below, and
without discussing any specific plan we descended. It was under-
stood that Seraphina and I should try to escape—I won’t say by
sea, but to the sea. At best, to ask the charitable help of some
passing ship, at worst to go out of the world together.

I had her confidence. I will not tell of my interview with her;
but I shall never forget my sensations of awe, as if entering a
temple, the melancholy and soothing intimacy of our meeting, the
dimly lit loftiness of the room, the vague form of La Chica in the
background, and the frail, girlish figure in black with a very pale,
delicate face. Father Antonio was the only other person present,
and chided her for giving way to grief. “It is like rebellion—
like rebellion,” he denounced, turning away his head to wipe a
tear hastily; and I wondered and thanked God that I should be
a comfort to that tender young girl, whose lot on earth had been
dificult, whose sorrow was great but could not overwhelm her
indomitable spirit, which held a promise of sweetness and love.

Her courage was manifest to me in the gentle and sad tones of
her voice. I made her sit in a vast armchair of tapestry, in which
she looked lost like a little child, and I took a stool at her feet.
This is an unforgetable hour in my life in which not a word of love
was spoken, which is not to be written of. The burly shadow of
the priest lay motionless from the window right across the room;

186 ROMANCE

the flickering flame of a silver lamp made an unsteady white circle
of light on the lofty ceiling above her head. A clock was beating
gravely somewhere in the distant gloom, like the unperturbed
heart of that silence, in which our understanding of each other was
growing, even into a strength fit to withstand every tempest.

“Escape by the sea,” I said aloud. “It would be, at least,
like two lovers leaping hand in hand off a high rock, and nothing
else.”

Father Antonio’s bass voice spoke behind us.

“It is better to jeopardize the sinful body that returns to the
dust of which it is made than the redeemed soul, whose awful lot
is eternity. Reflect.”

Seraphina hung her head, but her hand did not tremble in mine.

“My daughter,” the old man continued, ‘“ you have to confide
your fate to a noble youth of elevated sentiments, and of a truly
chivalrous heart. . . .”

“JT trust him,” said Seraphina.

And, as I heard her say this, it seemed really to me as if, in very
truth, my sentiments were noble and my heart chivalrous. Such
is the power of a girl’s voice. ‘The door closed on us, and I felt
very humble.

But in the gallery Father Antonio leaned heavily on my
shoulder.

“T shall be a lonely old man,” he whispered faintly. “ After
all these years! Two great nobles; the end of a great house—
a child I had seen grow up. . . . But I am less afraid for her
now.”

I shall not relate all the plans we made and rejected. Every-
thing seemed impossible. We knew from Castro that O’Brien had
gone to Havana, either to take the news of Don Balthasar’s death
himself, or else to prevent the news spreading there too soon.
Whatever his motive for leaving Rio Medio, he had left orders
that the house should be respected under the most awful penalties,
and that it should be watched so that no one left it. The English-
man was to be killed at sight. Not a hair on anybody else’s head
was to be touched.

To escape seemed impossible; then on the third day the thing
came to pass. —The way was found. Castro, who served me as if

PART THIRD 187

Carlos’ soul had passed into my body, but looked at me with a
saturnine disdain, had arranged it all with Father Antonio.

It was the day of the burial of Carlos and Don Balthasar. That
same day Castro had heard that a ship had been seen becalmed
a long way out tosea. It was a great opportunity; and the funeral
procession would give the occasion for my escape. ‘There was in
Rio Medio, as in all Spanish towns amongst the respectable part of
the population, a confraternity for burying the dead, ‘“ The
Brothers of Pity,” who, clothed in black robes and cowls, with
only two holes for the eyes, carried the dead to their resting-place,
unrecognizable and unrecognized in that pious work. A “ Brother
of Pity” dress would be brought for me into Father Antonio’s
room. Castro was confident as to his ability of getting a boat. It
would be a very small and dangerous one, but what would I have,
if I neither killed my enemy, nor let anyone else kill him for me,
he commented with somber sarcasm.

A truce of God had been called, and the burial was to take place
in the evening, when the mortal remains of the last of the Riegos
would be laid in the vault of the cathedral of what had been known
as their own province, and had, in fact, been so for a time under a
grant from Charles V.

Early in the day I had a short interview with Seraphina. She
was resolute. “Then, long before dark, I slipped into Father An-
tonio’s room, where I was to stay until the moment to come out
and mingle with the throng of other Brothers of Pity. Once with
the bodies in the crypt of the cathedral, I was to await Seraphina
there, and, together, we should slip through a side door on to the
shore. Cesar, to throw any observer off the scent (three Lugarefios
were to be admitted to see the bodies put in their coffins), posted
two of the Riego negroes with loaded muskets on guard before the
door of my empty room, as if to protect me.

Then, just as dusk fell, Father Antonio, who had been praying
silently in a corner, got up, blew his nose, sighed, and suddenly
enfolded me in his powerful arms for an instant.

“TI am an old man—a poor priest,” he whispered jerkily into
my ear, ‘and the sea is very perfidious. And yet it favors the
sons of your nation. But, remember—the child has no one but
you. Spare her.”

188 ROMANCE

He went off; stopped. “ Inscrutable! inscrutable!” he mur-
mured, lifting upwards his eyes. He raised his hand with a solemn
slowness. ‘An old man’s blessing can do no harm,” he said
humbly. I bowed my head. My heart was too full for speech,
and the door closed. I never saw him again, except later on in his
surplice for a moment at the gate, his great bass voice distinct in the
chanting of the priests conducting the bodies.

The Lugarefios would respect the truce arranged by the bishop.

No man of them but the three had entered the Casa. Already,
early in the night, their black-haired women, with coarse faces and
melancholy eyes, were kneeling in rows under the black mantillas
on the stone floor of the cathedral, praying for the repose of the
soul of Seraphina’s father, of that old man who had lived among
them, unapproachable, almost invisible, and as if infinitely re-
moved. They had venerated him, and many of them had never
set eyes on his person.

It strikes me, now, as strange and significant of a mysterious
human need, the need to look upwards towards a superiority inex-
pressibly remote, the need of something to idealize in life. They
had only that and, maybe, a sort of love as idealized and as personal
for the mother of God, whom, also, they had never seen, to whom
they trusted to save them from a devil as real. And they had,
moreover, a fear even more real of O’Brien.

And, when one comes to think of it, in putting on the long spec-
tacled robe of a Brother of Pity, in walking before the staggering
bearers of the great coffin with a tall crucifix in my hand, in thus
taking advantage of their truce of God, I was, also, taking ad-
vantage of what was undoubtedly their honor—a thing that handi-
capped them quite as much as had mine when I found myself
unable to strike down O’Brien. At that time, I was a great deal
too excited to consider this, however. I had many things to think
of, and the immense necessity of keeping a cool head.

It was, after all, Tomas Castro to whom all the credit of the
thing belonged. Just after it had fallen very dark, he brought me
the black robes, a pair of heavy pistols to gird on under them, and
the heavy staff topped by a crucifix. He had an air of sarcastic
protest in the dim light of my room, and he explained with exag-
geratedly plain words precisely what I was to do—which, as a

PART THIRD ~ 189

matter of fact, was neither more nor less than merely following in
his own footsteps.

“And, oh, sefior,” he said sardonically, “if you desire again to
pillow your head upon the breast of your mother; if you would
again see your sister, who, alas! by bewitching my Carlos, is at the
heart of all our troubles ;if you desire again to see that dismal land
of yours, which politeness forbids me to curse, I would beg of you
not to let the mad fury of your nation break loose in the midst of
these thieves and scoundrels.”

He peered intently into the spectacled eyeholes of my cowl, and
laid his hand on his sword-hilt. His small figure, tightly clothed
in black velvet from chin to knee, swayed gently backwards and
forwards in the light of the dim candle, and his grotesque shadow
flitted over the ghostly walls of the great room. He stood gazing
silently for a minute, then turned smartly on his heels, and, with a
gesture of sardonic respect, threw open the door for me.

“Pray, senor,” he said, “that the moon may not rise too
soon.”

We went swiftly down the colonnades for the last time, in the
pitch darkness and into the blackness of the vast archway. The
clumping staff of my heavy crucifix drew hollow echoes from the
flagstones. In the deep sort of cave behind us, lit by a dim lanthorn,
the negroes waited to unbar the doors. Castro himself began to
mutter over his beads. Suddenly he said:

“Tt is the last time I shall stand here. Now, there is not any
more a place for me on the earth.”

Great flashes of light began to make suddenly visible the tall
pillars of the immense mournful place, and after a long time, abso-
lutely without a sound, save the sputter of enormous torches, an
incredibly ghostly body of figures, black-robed from head to foot,
with large eyeholes peering fantastically, swayed into the great arch
of the hall. Above them was the enormous black coffin. It was
a sight so appalling and unexpected that I stood gazing at them
without any power to move, until I remembered that I, too, was
such a figure. And then, with an ejaculation of impatience, Tomas
Castro caught at my hand, and whirled me round.

The great doors had swung noiselessly open, and the black night,
bespangled with little flames, was framed in front of me. He sud-

190 ROMANCE

denly unsheathed his portentous sword, and, hanging his great
hat upon his maimed arm, stalked, a pathetic and sinister figure
of grief, down the great steps. I followed him in the vivid and
extraordinary compulsion of the sinister body that, like one fabu-
lous and enormous monster, swayed impenetrably after me.

My heart beat till my head was in a tumultuous whirl, when
thus, at last, I stepped out of that house—but I suppose my grim
robes cloaked my emotions—though, seeing very clearly through
the eyeholes, it was almost incredible to me that I was not myself
seen. But these Brothers of Pity were a secret society, known to
no man except their spiritual head, who chose them in turn, and
not knowing even each other. ‘Their good deeds of charity were,
in that way, done by pure stealth. And it happened that their
spiritual director was the Father Antonio himself. At the foot of
the palace steps, drawn back out of our way, stood the great glass
coach of state, containing, even then, the woman who was all the
world to me, invisible to me, unattainable to me, not to be com-
forted by me, even as her great griefs were to me invisible and
unassuageable. And there between us, in the great coffin, held on
high by the grim, shadowy beings, was all that she loved, invisible,
unattainable, too, and beyond all human comfort. Standing there,
in the midst of the whispering, bare-headed, kneeling, and villainous
crowd, I had a vivid vision of her pale, dim, pitiful face. Ah, poor
thing! she was going away for good from all that state, from all
that seclusion, from all that peace, mutely, and with a noble pride
of quietness, into a world of dangers, with no head but mine to
think for her, no arm but mine to ward off all the great terrors,
the immense and dangerous weight of a new world.

In the twinkle of innumerable candles, the priceless harness of
the white mules, waiting to draw the great coach after us, shone
like streaks of ore in an infinitely rich silver mine. A double line
of tapers kept the road to the cathedral, and a crowd of our negroes,
the bell muzzles of their guns suggested in the twinkling light,
massed themselves round the coach. Outside the lines were the
crowd of rapscallions in red jackets, their women and children—
all the population of the Aldea Bajo, groaning. The whole crowd
got into motion round us, the white mules plunging frantically,
the coach swaying. Ahead of me marched the sardonic, gallantly

—

|
]

Standing there, in the midst of the whispering, bare-headed,
kneeling, and villainous crowd, I had a vivid vision

of her pale, dim, pitiful face

PART THIRD Ig!

grotesque figure of true Tomas, his sword point up, his motions
always jaunty. Ahead of him, again, were the white robes of many
priests, a cluster of tall candles, a great jeweled cross, and a tall
saint’s figure swaying, more than shoulder high, and disappearing
_ up above into the darkness. ‘For me, under my cowl, it was sufto-
catingly hot; but I seemed to move forward, following, swept
along without any volition of my own. It appeared an immensely
long journey; and then, as we went at last up the cathedral steps,
a voice cried harshly, ‘ Death to the heretic !” My heart stood
still. I clutched frantically at the handle of a pistol that I could
not disengage from folds of black cloth. But, as a matter of fact,
the cry was purely a general one; I was supposed to be shut up in
the palace still.

The sudden glow, the hush, the warm breath of incense, and
the blaze of light turned me suddenly faint; my ears buzzed, and
I heard strange sounds.

The cathedral was a mass of heads. Everyone in Rio Medio
was present, or came trooping in behind us. ‘The better class was
clustered near the blaze of gilding, mottled marble, wax flowers,
and black and purple drapery that vaulted over the two black
coffins in the choir. Down in the unlit body of the church the
riffraff of O’Brien kept the doors.

I followed the silent figure of Tomas Castro to the bishop’s own
stall, right up in the choir, and we became hidden from the rest
by the forest of candles round the catafalque. Up the center of
the great church, and high over the heads of the kneeling people,
came the great coffin, swaying, its bearers robbed of half. their
grimness by the blaze of lights. ‘Tomas Castro suddenly caught
at my sleeve whilst they were letting the coffin down on to the
bier. He drew me unnoticed into the shadow behind the bishop’s
stall. In the swift transit, I had a momentary glance of a small,
black figure, infinitely tiny in that quiet place, and infinitely soli-
tary, veiled in black from head to foot, coming alone up the center
of the nave. -

I stood hidden there beside the bishop’s stall for a long time,
and then suddenly I saw the black figure alone in the gallery, look-
ing down upon me—from the loggia of the Riegos. I felt sud-
denly an immense calm; she was looking at me with unseeing eyes,

192 ROMANCE

but I knew and felt that she would follow me now to the end of
the world. I had no more any doubts as to the issue of our enter-
prise ; it was open to no unsuccess with a figure so steadfast engaged
in it; it was impossible that blind fate should be insensible to
her charm, impossible that any man could strike at or thwart
her.

Monks began to sing; a great brass instrument grunted lamen-
tably; in the body of the building there was silence. “The bishop
and his supporters moved about, as if aimlessly, in front of the
altar; the chains of the gold censors clicked ceaselessly. Seraphina’s
head had sunk forward out of my sight. All the heads of the
cathedral bowed down, and suddenly, from round the side of the
stall, a hand touched mine, and a voice said, “It is time.” Very
softly, as if it were part of the rite, I was drawn round the stall
through a door in the side of the screen. As we went out, in his
turnings, the old bishop gave us the benediction. —Then the door
closed on the glory of his robes, and in a minute, in the darkness
we were rustling down a circular narrow staircase into the dimness
of a crypt, lit by the little blue flame of an oil lamp. From above
came sounds like thunder, immense, vibrating; we were imme-
diately under the choir. Through the cracks round a large stone
showed a parallelogram of light.

In the dimness I had a glimpse of the face of my conductor—a
thin, wonderfully hollow-checked lay brother. He began, with
great gentleness, to assist me out of my black robes, and then he
said:

“The sefiorita will be here very soon with the Sefior Tomas,”
and then added, with an infinitely sad and tender, dim smile:

“Will not the Sefior Caballero, if it is not repugnant, say a
prayer for the repose of . . .” He pointed gently upwards to
the great flagstone above which was the coffin of Don Balthasar
and Carlos. The priest himself was one of those very holy, very
touching—perhaps, very stupid—men that one finds in such places.
With his dim, wistful face he is very present in my memory. He
added: “And that the good God of us all may keep ‘it in the
Sefior Caballero’s heart to care well for the soul of the dear
sefiorita.”

“I am a very old man,” he whispered, after a pause. He was

PART THIRD 193

indeed an old man, quite worn out, quite without hope on earth.
“T have loved the sefiorita since she was a child. The Sefor
Caballero takes her from us. I would have him pray—to be made
worthy.”

Whilst I was doing it, the place began to be alive with whispers
of garments, of hushed footsteps, a small exclamation in a gruff
voice. Then the stone above moved out of its place, and a blaze
of light fell down from the choir above.

I saw beside me Seraphina’s face, brilliantly lit, looking upwards.
‘Tomas Castro said:

“ Come quickly . . . come quickly . . . the prayers are ending;
there will be people in the street.’”’ And from above an enormous
voice intoned:

Pr OU, she bG Mtl tis ocd ts 3) areata. 3s OC) eAndathe
serpent groaned discordantly. The end of a great box covered
with black velvet glided forward above our heads; ropes were
fastened round it. ‘The priest had opened a door in the shadowy
distance, beside a white marble tablet in the thick walls. The
cofin up above moved forward a little again; the ropes were re-
adjusted with a rattling, wooden sound. A dry, formal voice in-
toned from above:

PTL ok USEUS .. . ADs oe GUALIONG 6,» -<

From the open door the priest rattled his keys, and said, “‘ Come,
come,” impatiently.

I was horribly afraid that Seraphina would shriek or faint, or
refuse to move. “There was very little time. ‘The pirates might
stream out of the front of the cathedral as we came from the back;
the bishop had promised to accentuate the length of the service,
But Seraphina glided towards the open door; a breath of fresh air
reached us. She looked back once. The coffin was swinging right
over the hole, shutting out the light. Tomas Castro took her
hand and said, ‘Come . . . come,” with infinite tenderness.

He had been sobbing convulsively. We went up some
steps, and the door shut behind us with a sound like a sigh of
relief.

We went very fast, in perfect blackness and solitude, on the
deserted beach between the old town and the village. Every soul
was near the cathedral. A boat lay half afloat. To the left in the

IF

toe Si “ROMANCE

distance the light of the schooner opposite the Casa Riego wavered
on the still water.

Suddenly Tomas Castro said:

“The sefiorita never before set foot to the open ground.”

At once I lifted her into the boat. “‘ Shove off, Tomas,” I said,
with a beating heart.

PART FOURTH
BLADE AND GUITAR
CHAPTER I

HERE was a slight, almost imperceptible jar, a faint
grating noise, a whispering sound of sand—and the boat,
without a splash, floated.

The earth, slipping as it were away from under the keel, left us
borne upon the waters of the bay, which were as still as the windless
night itself. The pushing off of that boat was like a launching
into space, as a bird opens its wings on the brow of a cliff, and
remains poised in the air. A sense of freedom came to me, the un-
reasonable feeling of exultation—as if I had been really a bird
essaying its flight for the first time. Everything, sudden and evil
and most fortunate, had been arranged for me, as though I had
been a lay figure on which Romance had been wreaking its be-
wildering unexpectedness; but with the floating clear of the boat,
I felt somehow that this escape I had to manage myself.

It was dark. Dipping cautiously the blade of the oar, I gave
another push against the shelving shore. Seraphina sat, cloaked
and motionless, and Tomas Castro, in the bows, made no sound.
I didn’t even hear him breathe. Everything was left to me. The
boat, impelled afresh, made a slight ripple, and my elation was re-
placed in a moment by all the torments of the most acute anxiety.

I gave another push, and then lost the bottom. Success depended
upon my resource, readiness, and courage. And what was this
success? Immediately, it meant getting out of the bay, and into
the open sea in a twelve-foot dingey looted from some ship years
ago by the Rio Medio pirates, if that miserable population of sordid
and ragged outcasts of the Antilles deserved such a romantic name.
They were sea-thieves.

Already the wooded shoulder of a mountain was thrown out

196 ROMANCE

intensely black by the glow in the sky behind. The moon was
about to rise. A great anguish took my heart as if in a vice. The
stillness of the dark shore struck me as unnatural. I imagined
the yell of the discovery breaking it, and the fancy caused me a
greater emotion than the thing itself, I flatter myself, could pos-
sibly have done. The unusual silence in which, through the open
portals, the altar of the cathedral alone blazed with many flames
upon the bay, seemed to enter my very heart violently, like a sudden
access of anguish. The two in the boat with me were silent, too.
I could not bear it.

“*Seraphina,” I murmured, and heard a stifled sob. :

“Tt is time to take the oars, sefior,” whispered Castro suddenly,
as though he had fallen asleep as soon as he had scrambled into
the bows, and only had awaked that instant. ‘‘ The mists in the
middle of the bay will hide us when the moon rises.”

It was time—if we were to escape. Escape where? Into the
open sea? With that silent, sorrowing girl by my side! In this
miserable cockleshell, and without any refuge open to us? It was
not really a hesitation; she could not be left at the mercy of
O’Brien. It was as though I had for the first time perceived how
vast the world was; how dangerous; how unsafe. And there was
no alternative. There could be no going back.

Perhaps, if I had known what was before us, my heart would have
failed me utterly out of sheer pity. Suddenly my eyes caught sight
of the moon making like the glow of a bush fire on the black slope
of the mountain. In a moment it would flood the bay with light,
and the schooner anchored off the beach before the Casa Riego was
not eighty yards away. I dipped my oar without a splash. Castro
pulled with his one hand.

The mists rising on the lowlands never filled the bay, and I could
see them lying in moonlight across the outlet like a silvery white
ghost of a wall. We penetrated it, and instantly became lost to
view from the shore.

Castro, pulling quickly, turned his head, and grunted at a red
blur very low in the mist. A fire was burning on the low point
of land where Nichols—the Nova Scotian—had planted the bat-
tery which had worked such havoc with Admiral Rowley’s boats.
It was a mere earthwork, and some of the guns had been removed.

int

PART FOURTH 197

The fire, however, warned us that there were some people on the
point. We ceased rowing for a moment, and Castro explained to
me that a fire was always lit when any of these thieves’ boats were
stirring. “There would be three or four men to keep it up.. On
this very night Manuel-del-Popolo was outside with a good many
rowboats, waiting on the Indiaman. The ship had been seen near-
ing the shore since noon. She was becalmed now. Perhaps they
were looting her already.

This fact had so far favored our escape. There had been no
strollers on the beach that night. Since the investment of the Casa
Riego, Castro had lived amongst the besiegers on his prestige of a
superior person, of a caballero skilled in war and diplomacy. No
one knew how much the tubby, saturnine little man was in the
confidence of the Juez O’Brien; and there was no doubt that he
was a good Catholic. He was a very grave, a very silent caballero.
In reality his heart had been broken by the death of Carlos, and he
did not care what happened to him. His action was actuated by
his scorn and hate of the Rio Medio population, rather than by
any friendly feeling towards myself.

On that night Domingo’s partisans were watching the Casa
Riego, while Manuel (who was more of a seaman) had taken most
of his personal friends, and all the larger boats that would float,
to do a bit of “ outside work,” as they called it, upon the becalmed
West Indiaman.

This had facilitated Castro’s plan, and it also accounted for the
smallness of the boat, which was the only one of the refuse lot left
on the beach that did not gape at every seam. She was not tight
by any means, though. I could hear the water washing above the
bottom-boards, and I remember how concern about keeping Sera-
phina’s feet dry mingled with the grave apprehensions of our enter-
prise.

We had been paddling an easy stroke. The red blur of the
fire on the point was growing larger, while the diminished blaze
of lights on the high altar of the cathedral pierced the mist with
an orange ray.

“The boat should be bailed out,” I remarked in a whisper.

Castro laid his oar in and made his way to the thwart. It shows
how well we were prepared for our flight, that there was not even

198 ROMANCE

a half-cocoanut shell in the boat. A gallon earthenware jar, stop-
pered with a bunch of grass, contained all our provision of fresh
water. Castro displaced it, and, bending low, tried to bale with
his big, soft hat. I should imagine that he found it impracticable,
because, suddenly, he tore off one of his square-toed shoes with a
steel buckle. He used it as a scoop, blaspheming at the necessity,
but in a very low mutter, out of respect for Seraphina.

Standing up in the stern-sheets by her side, I kept on sculling
gently. Once before I had gone desperately to sea—escaping the
gallows, perhaps—in a very small boat, with the drunken song of
Rangsley’s uncle heralding the fascination of the unknown to a
very callow youth. That night had been as dark, but the danger
had been less great. The boat, it is true, had actually sunk under
us, but then it was only the sea that might have swallowed me who
knew nothing of life, and was as much a stranger to fate as the
animals on our farm. But now the world of men stood ready to
devour us, and the Gulf of Mexico was of no more account than
a puddle on a road infested by robbers. What were the dangers
of the sea to the passions amongst which I was launched—with my
high fortunes in my hand, and, like all those who live and love,
with a sword suspended above my head?

The danger had been less great on that old night, when I had
heard behind me the soft crash of the smugglers’ feet on the shingle.
It had been less great, and, if it had had a touch of the sordid,
it had led me to this second and more desperate escape—in a
cockleshell, carrying off a silent and cloaked figure, which quick-
ened my heart-beats at each look. I was carrying her off from the
evil spells of the Casa Riego, as a knight a princess from an en-
chanted castle. But she was more to me than any princess to any
knight.

There was never anything like that in the world. Lovers might
have gone, in their passion, to a certain death; but never, it seemed
to me, in the history of youth, had they gone in such an atmosphere
of cautious stillness upon such a reckless adventure. Everything
depended upon slipping out through the gullet of the bay without
a sound. The men on the point had no means of pursuit, but, if
they heard or saw anything, they could shout a warning to the
boats outside. There were the real dangers—my first concern.

PART FOURTH 199

Afterwards . . . I did not want to think of afterwards. There
were only the open sea and the perilous coast. Perhaps, if I
thought of them, I should give up.

I thought only of gaining each successive moment, and concen-
trated all my faculties into an effort of stealthiness. I handled the
boat with a deliberation full of tense prudence, as if the oar had
been a stalk of straw, as if the water of the bay had been the film
of a glass bubble an unguarded movement could have shivered to
atoms. I hardly breathed, for the feeling that a deeper breath
would have blown away the mist that was our sole protection
now.

It was not blown away. On the contrary, it clung closer to us,
with the enveloping chill of a cloud wreathing a mountain crag.
The vague shadows and dim outlines that had hune around us
began, at last, to vanish utterly in an impenetrable and luminous
whiteness. And through the jumble of my thoughts darted the
sudden knowledge that there was a sea-fog outside—a thing quite
different from the nightly mists of the bay. It was rolling into the
passage inexplicably, for no stir of air reached us. It was possible
to watch its endless drift by the glow of the fire on the point, now
much nearer us. Its edges seemed to melt away in the flight of the
water-dust. It was a sea-fog coming in. Was it disastrous to us,
or favorable? It, at least, answered our immediate need for con-
cealment, and this was enough for me, when all our future hung
upon every passing minute.

The Rio picaroons, when engaged in thieving from some ship
becalmed on the coast, began by towing one of their schooners as
far as the entrance. ‘They left her there as a rallying point for
the boats, and to receive, the booty.

One of these schooners, as I knew, was moored opposite the Casa
Riego. ‘The other might be lying at anchor somewhere right in
the fairway ahead, within a few yards. I strained my ears for some
revealing sound from her, if she were there—a cough, a voice, the
creak of a block, or the fall of something on her deck. Nothing
came. I began to fear lest I should run stem on into her side with-
out a moment’s warning. I could see no further than the length
of our twelve-foot boat.

To make certain of avoiding that danger, I decided to shave

200 ROMANCE

close the spit of sand that tipped the narrow strip of lowland to
the south. I set my teeth, and sheered in resolutely.

Castro remained on the after-thwart, with his elbows on his
knees. His head nearly touched my leg. I could distinguish the
woeful, bent back, the broken swaying of the plume in his hat.
Seraphina’s perfect immobility gave me the measure of her courage,
and the silence was so profoundly pellucid that the flutter of the
flames that we were nearing began to come loud out of the blur
of the glow. Then I heard the very crackling of the wood, like
a fusillade from a great distance. Even then Castro did not deign
to turn his head.

Such as he was—a born vagabond, contrabandista, spy in armed
camps, sutler at the tail of the Grande Armée (escaped, God only
knows how, from the snows of Russia), beggar, guerillero, bandit,
skeptically murderous, draping his rags in saturnine dignity—he
had ended by becoming the sinister and grotesque squire of our
quixotic Carlos. There was something romantically somber in his
devotion. He disdained to turn round at the danger, because he
had left his heart on the coffin as a lesser affection would have laid
a wreath. I looked down at Seraphina. She, too, had left a heart
in the vaults of the cathedral. The edge of the heavy cloak drawn
over her head concealed her face from me, and, with her face, her
ignorance, her great doubts, her great fears.

I heard, above the crackling of dry wood, a husky exclamation of
surprise, and then a startled voice exclaiming:

“Look! Santissima Madre! What is this?”

Sheer instinct altered at once the motion of my hand so as to
incline the bows of the dingey away from the shore; but a sort of
stupefying amazement seized upon my soul. We had been seen.
It was all over. Was it possible? All over, already?

In my anxiety to keep clear of the schooner which, for all I
know to this day, may not have been there at all, I had come too
close to the sand, so close that I heard soft, rapid footfalls stop
short in the fog. A voice seemed to be asking me in a whisper:

“Where, oh, where?”

Another cried out irresistibly, “‘ I see it.”

It was a subdued cry, as if hushed in sudden awe.

My arm swung to and fro; the turn of my wrist went on im-

PART FOURTH 201

parting the propelling motion of the oar. All the rest of my body
was gripped helplessly in the dead expectation of the end, as if in
the benumbing seconds of a fall from a towering height. And it
was swift, too. I felt a draught at the back of my neck—a breath
of wind. And instantly, as if a battering-ram had been let swing
past me at many layers of stretched gauze, I beheld, through a tat-
tered deep hole in the fog, a roaring vision of flames, borne down
and springing up again; a dance of purple gleams on the strip of
unveiled water, and three coal-black figures in the light.

One of them stood high on lank black legs, with long black arms
thrown up stiffly above the black shape of a hat. The two others
crouched low on the very edge of the water, peering as if from an
ambush.

The clearness of this vision was contained by a thick and fiery

- atmosphere, into which a soft white rush and swirl of fog fell like
a sudden whirl of snow. It closed down and overwhelmed at once
the tall flutter of the flames, the black figures, the purple gleams
playing round my oar. The hot glare had struck my eyeballs once,
and had melted away again into the old, fiery stain on the mended
fabric of the fog. But the attitudes of the crouching men left no
room for doubt that we had been seen. I expected a sudden up-
lifting of voices on the shore, answered by cries from the sea, and
I screamed excitedly at Castro to lay hold of his oar.

He did not stir, and after my shout, which must have fallen on
the scared ears with a weird and unearthly note, a profound silence
attended us—the silence of a superstitious fear. And, instead of
howls, I heard, before the boat had traveled its own short length,
a voice that seemed to be the voice of fear itself asking, “‘ Did you
hear that?” and a trembling mutter of an invocation to all the
saints. Then a strangled throat trying to pronounce firmly, “The
souls of the dead Inglez. Crying from pain.”

Admiral Rowley’s seamen, so miserably thrown away in the ill-
conceived attack on the bay, were making a ghostly escort for our
escape. ‘Those dead boats’-crews were supposed to haunt the fatal
spot, after the manner of specters that linger in remorse, regret,
or revenge, about the gates of departure. I had blundered; the
fog, breaking apart, had betrayed us. But my obscure and van-
quished countrymen held possession of the outlet by the memory

202 ROMANCE

of their courage. In this critical moment it was they, I may say,
who stood by us.

We, on our part, must have been disclosed, dark, indistinct,
utterly inexplicable; completely unexpected; an apparition of
stealthy shades. The painful voice in the fog said:

“Tet them be. Answer not. They shall pass on, for none of
them died on the shore—all in the water. Yes, all in the water.”

I suppose the man was trying to reassure himself and his com-
panions. His meaning, no doubt, was that, being on shore, they
were safe from the ghosts of those Inglez who had never achieved
a landing. From the enlarging and sudden deepening of the
glow, I knew that they were throwing more brushwood on the
fire.

I kept on sculling, and gradually the sharp fusillade of dry
twigs grew more distant, more muffled in the fog. At last it
ceased altogether. Then a weakness came over me, and, hauling
my oar in, I sat down by Seraphina’s side. I longed for the
sound of her voice, for some tender word, for the caress of a
murmur upon my perplexed soul. I was sure of her, as of a
conquered and rare treasure, whose possession simplifies life into a
sort of adoring guardianship—and I felt so much at her mercy that
an overwhelming sense of guilt made me afraid to speak to her.
The slight heave of the open sea swung the boat up and down.

Suddenly Castro let out a sort of lugubrious chuckle, and, in low
tones, I began to upbraid him with his apathy. Even with his one
arm he should have obeyed my call to the oar. It was incompre-
hensible to me that we had not been fired at. Castro enlightened
me, in a few moody and scornful words. The Rio Medio people,
he commented upon the incident, were fools, of bestial nature,
afraid of they knew not what.

“Castro, the valor of these dead countrymen of mine was not
wasted; they have stood by us like true friends,” I whispered in
the excitement of our escape.

“These insensate English,” he grumbled. . . . “ A dead enemy
would have served the turn better. If the caballero had none
other than dead friends. . . .”

His harsh, bitter mumble stopped. Then Seraphina’s voice said
softly:

PART FOURTH 203

“Tt is you who are the friend, Tomas Castro. To you shall
come a friend’s reward.” .

“Alas, sefiorita!”” he sighed. ‘ What remains for me in this
world—for me who have given for two masses for the souls of that
illustrious man, and of your cousin Don Carlos, my last piece of
silver?”

“We shall make you very rich, Tomas Castro,” she said with
decision, as if there had been bags of gold in the boat.

He returned a high-flown phrase of thanks in a bitter, absent
whisper. I knew well enough that the help he had given me was
not for money, not for love—not even for loyalty to the Riegos. It
was obedience to the last recommendation of Carlos. He ran risks
for my safety, but gave me none of his allegiance.

He was still the same tubby, murderous little man, with a steel
blade screwed to the wooden stump of his forearm, as when, swell-
ing his breast, he had stepped on his toes before me like a blood-
thirsty pigeon, in the steerage of the ship that had brought us from
home. I heard him mumble, with almost incredible, sardonic con-
tempt, that, indeed, the sefor would soon have none but dead
friends if he refrained from striking at his enemies. Had the sefior
taken the very excellent opportunity afforded by Providence, and
that any sane Christian man would have taken—to let him stab
the Juez O’Brien—we should not then be wandering in a little
boat. What folly! What folly! One little thrust of a knife,
and we should all have been now safe in our beds. . . .

His tone was one of weary superiority, and I remained appalled
by that truth, stripped of all chivalrous pretense. It was clear,
in sparing that defenseless life, I had been guilty of cruelty for the
sake of my conscience. “There was Seraphina by my side; it was
she who had to suffer. I had let her enemy go free, because he
had happened to be near me, disarmed. Had I acted like an Eng-
lishman and a gentleman, or only like a fool satisfying his sentiment
at other people’s expense? Innocent people, too, like the Riego ser-
vants, Castro himself; like Seraphina, on whom my high-minded
forbearance had brought all these dangers, these hardships, and this
uncertain fate.

She gave no sign of having heard Castro’s words. ‘The silence
of women is very impenetrable, and it was as if my hold upon the

204 ROMANCE

world—since she was the whole world for me—had been weak-
ened by that shade of decency of feeling which makes a distinction
between killing and murder. But suddenly I felt, without her
cloaked figure having stirred, her small hand slip into mine. Its
soft warmth seemed to go straight to my heart, soothing, invigorat-
ing—as if she had slipped into my palm a weapon of extraordinary
and inspiring potency.

“Ah, you are generous,” I whispered close to the edge of the
cloak overshadowing her face.

“You must now think of yourself, Juan,” she said.

“Of myself,” I echoed sadly. “I have only you to think of,
and you are so far away—out of my reach. There are your dead
—all your loss, between you and me.”

She touched my arm.

“Tt is I who must think of my dead,” she whispered. ‘“ But
you, you must think of yourself, because I have nothing of mine
in this world now.”

Her words affected me like the whisper of remorse. It was true.
There were her wealth, her lands, her palaces; but her only refuge
was that little boat. Her father’s long aloofness from life had
created such an isolation round his closing years that his daughter
had no one but me to turn to for protection against the plots of
her own Intendente. And, at the thought of our desperate plight, ~
of the suffering awaiting us in that small boat, with the possibility
of a lingering death for an end, I wavered for a moment. Was it
not my duty to return to the bay and give myself up? In that
case, as Castro expressed it, our throats would be cut for love of
the Juez.

But Seraphina, the rabble would carry to the Casa on the palms
of their hands—out of veneration for the family, and for fear of
O’Brien.

“So, sefior,” he mumbled, “if to you to-morrow’s sun is as
little as to me, let us pull the boat’s head round.”

“ Let us set our hands to the side and overturn it, rather,” Sera-
phina said, with an indignation of high command.

I said no more. If I could have taken O’Brien with me into
the other world, I would have died to save her the pain of so much
as a pinprick. But because I could not, she must even go with

PART FOURTH 205

me; must suffer because I clung to her as men cling to their hope
of highest good—with an exalted and selfish devotion.

Castro had moved forward, as if to show his readiness to pull
round. Meantime I heard a click. A feeble gleam fell on his
misty hands under the black halo of the hat rim. Again the flint
and blade clicked, and a large red spark winked rapidly in the bows.
He had lighted a cigarette.

CHAPTER II

ILENCE, stillness, breathless caution were the absolute con-

ditions of our existence. But I hadn’t the heart to remon-

strate with him for the danger he caused Seraphina and
myself. The fog.was so thick now that I could not make out his
outline, but I could smell the tobacco very plainly.

The acrid odor of picadura seemed to knit the events of
three years into one uninterrupted adventure. I remembered the
shingle beach; the deck of the old Thames. It brought to my
mind my first vision of Seraphina, and the emblazoned magnificence
of Carlos’ sick bed. It all came and went in a whiff of smoke; for
of all the power and charm that had made Carlos so seductive there
remained no such deep trace in the world as in the heart of the
little grizzled bandit who, like a philosopher, or a desperado, puffed
his cigarette in the face of the very spirit of murder hovering round
us, under the mask and cloak of the fog. And by the serene heaven
of my life’s evening, the spirit of murder became actually audible
to us in hasty and rhythmical knocks, accompanied by a cheerful
tinkling.

These sounds, growing swiftly louder, at last induced Castro to
throw away his cigarette. Seraphina clutched my arm. The noise
of oars rowing fast, to the precipitated jingling of a guitar, swooped
down upon us with a gallant ferocity.

“ Caramba,’ Castro muttered; “it is the fool Manuel him-
self!”

I said, then:

“We have eight shots between us two, Tomas.”

He thrust.his brace of pistols upon my knees.

“Dispose of them as your worship pleases,’ he muttered.

“You mustn’t give up, yet,” I whispered.

“What is it that I give up?” he mumbled wearily. “ Besides,
there grows from my forearm a blade. If I shall find myself in-

206

PART FOURTH 207

disposed to quit this world alone. . . . Listen to the singing of
that imbecile.”

A caroling falsetto seemed to hang muffled in upper space, above
the fog that settled low on the water, like a dense and milky sedi-
_ment of the air. The moonlight fell into it strangely. We seemed
to breathe at the bottom of a shallow sea, white as snow, shining
like silver, and impenetrably opaque everywhere, except overhead,
where the yellow disc of the moon glittered through a thin cloud
of steam. ‘The gay truculence of the hollow knocking, the metallic
jingle, the shrill trolling, went on crescendo to a burst of babbling
voices, a mad speed of tinkling, a thundering shout, “ 4/tro,
Amigo!” followed by a great clatter of oars flung in. The sudden
silence pulsated with the ponderous strokes of my heart.

To escape now seemed impossible. At least it seemed impossible
while they talked. A dark spot in the shining expanse of fog
swam into view. It shifted its place after I had first made it out,
and then remained motionless, astern of the dingey. It was the
shadow of a big boat full of men, but when they were silent, I was
not sure that I saw anything at all. I make no doubt, had they
been aware of our nearness, there were amongst them eyes that
could have detected us in the same elusive way. But how could
they even dream of anything of the kind? They talked noisily, and
there must have been a round dozen of them, at the least. Some-
times they would fall a-shouting all together, and then keep quiet
as if listening. By-and-by I began to hear answering yells, that
seemed to converge upon us from all directions.

We were in the thick of it. It was Manuel’s boat, as Castro
had guessed, and the other boats were rallying upon it gropingly,
keeping up a succession of yells:

“ Ohe! Ohe! Where, where?”

And the people in Manuel’s boat howled back at them, ‘ Ohe!/
Ohe .. e! This way; here!”

Suddenly he struck the guitar a mighty blow, and chanted in an
inspired and grandiose strain:

“ Steer—for—the—song.”

His fingers ran riot among the strings, and above the jingling
his voice, forced to the highest pitch, declaimed, as in the midst of

a tempest:

208 ROMANCE

‘« T adore the saints in the glory of heaven
And, on the dust of the earth,
‘The print of her footsteps.”

He was improvising. Sometimes he gasped; the rill of softened
tinkle ran on, and, glaring watchfully, I fancied I could detect
his shape in the white vapor, like a shadow thrown from afar by
a tallow dip upon a snowy sheet—the lank droop of his posturing,
the greasy locks, the attentive poise of his head, the sentimental
rolling of his lustrous and enormous eyes.

I had not forgotten his astonishing display in the cabin of the
schooner when, after the confiding of his woes and his ambitions,
he had favored me with a sample of his art. As at that time, when
he had been nursing his truculent conceit, he sang, and the unsteady
twanging of his guitar lurched and staggered far behind his voice,
like a drunken slave in the footsteps of a raving master. Tinkle,
tinkle, twang! A headlong rush of muddled fingering; a sudden
bang, like a heavy stumble.

“She is the proud daughter of the old Castile! Ola! Ola!”
he chanted mysteriously at the beginning of every stanza in a
rapturous and soft ecstasy, and then would shriek, as though he
had been suddenly cast up on the rock. ‘The poet of Rio Medio
was rallying his crew of thieves to a rhapsody of secret and unre-
quited passion. Twang, ping, tinkle tinkle. He was the Capataz
of the valiant Lugarefos! The true Capataz! ‘The only Capataz.
Ola! Ola! Twang, twang. But he was the slave of her charms,
the captive of her eyes, of her lips, of her hair, of her eyebrows,
which, he proclaimed in a soaring shriek, were like rainbows arched
over stars.

It was a love-song, a mournful parody, the odious grimacing of
an ape to the true sorrow of the human face. I could have fled
from it, as from an intolerable humiliation. And it would have
been easy to pull away unheard while he sang, but I had a plan,
the beginning of a plan, something like the beginning of a hope.
And for that I should have to use the fee for the purpose of re-
maining within earshot.

Would the fog last long enough to serve my turn? That was
the only question, and I believed it would, for it settled lower;
it settled down denser, almost too heavy to be stirred by the fitful

Like a shadow thrown from afar... upon a snowy sheet

PART FOURTH 209

efforts of the breeze. It was a true night fog of the tropics, that,
born after sunset, tries to creep back into the warm bosom of the
sea before sunrise. Once in Rio Medio, taking a walk in the early
morning along the sand-dunes, I had stood watching below me the
heads of some people, fishing from a boat, emerge strangely in the
dawn out of such a fog. It concealed their very shoulders more
completely than water could have done. I trusted it would not
come so soon to our heads, emerging, though it seemed to me that
already, by merely clambering on Castro’s shoulders, I could attain
to clear moonlight; see the highlands of the coast, the masts of the
English ship. She could not be very far off if only one could tell
the direction. But an unsteady little dingey was not the platform
for acrobatic exercises, and Castro not exactly the man.

The slightest noise would have betrayed us, and moreover, the
thing was no good, for even supposing I had got a hurried sight of
the ship’s spars, I should have to get down into the fog to pull, and
there would be nothing visible to keep us from going astray, unless
at every dozen strokes I clambered on Castro’s shoulders again to
rectify the direction—an obviously impracticable and absurd pro-
ceeding.

“She is the proud daughter of old Castile, O/a,O/4,”

Manuel sang confidentially with a subdued and gallant lilt
. . - Obviously impracticable. But I had another idea.
Tinkle tinkle pinnnng. . . Brrroum. Brrrroum.

‘‘ My soul yearns for the alms of a smile.
For a forgiving glance yearns my lofty soul .

he sang. Ah, if one could have added another four feet to one’s
stature. Four or five feet only. ‘There seemed to be nothing but
a thin veil between me and the moon. No more than a thin haze.
But at the level of my eyes everything was hidden. From behind
the white veil came the crying of the strings, a screeching, lugu-
brious and fierce in its artificial transport, as if it were mocking
my sad and ardent conviction of unworthiness, the crowning tor-
ment, and the inward pride of pure love. In the breathless pauses
I could hear the hollow bumping of gunwales knocking against

210 | ROMANCE

each other; faint splashings of oars; the distant hail of some lag-
gards groping their way on the shrouded sea.

The note of cruel passion that runs in the blood held these cut-
throats profoundly silent in their boats, as at home I could imagine
a party of smugglers (they would not stick at a murder or two,
either) listening, with pensive faces, to a sentimental ditty of some
“sweet Nancy,” howled dismally within the walls of a wayside
taproom in the smoke of pipes. I seemed to understand pro-
foundly the difference of races that brings with it the feeling of
romance or awakens hate. My gorge rose at Manuel’s song. I
hated his lamentations. ‘“‘ Alas, alas; in vain, in vain.” He
strummed with vertiginous speed, with fury, and the distracted
clamor of his voice, wrestling madly with the ringing madness of
the strings, ended in a piercing and supreme shriek.

“ Finished. It is finished.” A low and applauding murmur
flowed to my ears, the austere acclamations of connoisseurs. “Viva,
viva, Manuele!”—a squeak of fervid admiration. ‘‘ Ah, our
Manuelito.” . . . But a gruff voice discoursed jovially, ‘“ Care
not, Manuel. What of Paquita with the broken tooth? Is she
not left to thee? And, por Dios, hombres, in the dark all women
are alike.”

“JT will cram thy unclean mouth with live coals,” Manuel
drawled spitefully.

They roared with laughter at this sally. I depicted to myself
their shapes, their fierce gesticulations, their earrings, bound heads,
rags, and weapons, the vile scowls on their swarthy, grimacing
faces. My anxiety beheld them as plainly as anything seen with
the eyes of the body. And, with my sharpened hearing catching
every word with preternatural distinctness, I felt as if, the ring
of Gyges on my finger, I had sat invisible at the council of my
enemies.

It was noisy, animated, with an issue of supreme interest for us.
The ship, seen at midday standing inshore with a light wind, had
not approached the bay near enough to be conveniently attacked
till just after dusk. They had waited for her all the afternoon,
sleeping and gambling on the spit of sand. But something heavy
in her appearance had excited their craven suspicions, and checked
their ardor. She appeared to them dangerous. What. if she were

PART FOURTH 211

an English man-of-war disguised? Some even pretended to recog-
nize in her positively one of the lighter frigates of Rowley’s squad-

ron. Night had fallen whilst they squabbled, and their flotilla

hung under the land, the men in a conflict of rapacity and fear,

arguing among themselves as to the ship’s character, but all unani-

‘mously goading Manuel—since he would call himself their only

Capataz—to go boldly and find out.

It seems he had just been doing this with the help of a few
choicer spirits, and under cover of the fog. They had managed to
steal near enough to hear Englishmen conversing on board, orders
given, and the yo-hoing of invisible sailors trimming the yards of
the ship to the fitful airs. ‘This last, of course, was decisive. Such
sounds are not heard on a man-of-war. She was a merchant ship:
she would be an easy prey. And Manuel, in a state of exaltation
at his venturesome bravery, had pulled back inshore, to rally all
the boats round his own, and lead them to certain plunder. ‘They
would soon find out, he declaimed, what it was to have at their
head their own valiant Manuel, instead of that vagabond, that
stranger, that Andalusian starveling; that traitor, that infidel, that
Castro. Hidden away, he seemed to spout all this for our ears
alone, as though he could see us in our boat. . . . Patience; pa-
tience! Some day he would cut off that interloper’s eyelids, and lay
him on his back under a nice clear sun.

Castro made a brusque movement; a little shudder of disgust
escaped Seraphina. . . . Meantime, Manuel declared, by his
audacity, that ship was as good as theirs already. ‘‘ Viva el Capa-
taz!” they cheered.

The cloud-like vapors resting on the sea muffled the short roar;
we heard grim laughter, excited cries. He began to make a set
speech, and his voice, haranguing with vehement inflections in the
shining whiteness of a cloud, had an amazing and uncorporeal char-
acter; the quality of abstract surprise; of phenomenal emotion
shouted into empty space. And for me it had, also, the fascination
of a revealed depth.

It was like the oration of an ambitious leader in a farce; he-held
his hearers with his eloquence, as much as he had done with the
song of his grotesque and desecrating love. He vaunted his sagacity
and his valor, and overwhelmed with invective all sorts of names—

212 ROMANCE

my own and Castro’s among them. He revealed the unholy ideals
of all that band of scoundrels—ideals that he said should find
fruition under his captaincy. He boasted of secret conferences with
O’Brien. There were murmurs of satisfaction.

I don’t wonder at Seraphina’s shudder of horror, of disgust, of
dismay, and indignation. Robbed of the inexpugnable shelter of
the Casa Riego, she, too, was made to look into the depths; upon
the animalism, the lusts, and the reveries of that sordid, vermin-
haunted crowd. I felt for her a profound and shamed sorrow. It
was like a profaning touch onthe sacredness of her mourning for
the dead, and on her clear and passionate vision of life.

“ Hombres de Rio Medio! Amigos! Valientes! . . .”
Manuel was beginning his peroration. He would lead’them, now,
against the English ship. ‘The terrified heretics would surrender.
There was always gold in English ships. He stopped his speech,
and then called loudly, “‘ Let the boats keep touch with each other,
and not, stray in that fog.”

“The dog,” grunted Castro. We heard a resolute bustle of
preparation; oars were being shipped.

“ Make ready, Tomas,” I whispered.

“ Ready for what?” he grumbled. “‘ Where shall your worship
run from these swine?”

“We must follow them,” I answered.

“The madness of the sefior’s countrymen descends upon him,”
he whispered with sardonic politeness. ‘‘ Wherefore follow?”

“To find the English ship,” I answered swiftly.

This, from the moment we had heard Manuel’s guitar, had been
my idea. Since the fog that concealed us from their sight made
us, too, hopelessly blind, those wretches must guide us themselves
out of their own clutches, as it were. I don’t put this forward as
an inspired conception. It was a most risky and almost hopeless
expedient; but the position was so critical that there was no other
alternative to sitting still and waiting with folded hands for dis-
covery. Castro seemed more inclined for the latter.

Fortunately, the bandits wasted some time in blasphemous bicker-
ings as to the order of the boats in the procession of attack. I
urged my views upon Castro in hurried whispers. His assent was
of importance, since he could use an oar very well, and, if left to

PART FOURTH 243

myself, I could not hope to scull fast enough to keep within hearing
of the flotilla.

“Of what use to us would be a ship in Manuel’s power?” he
argued morosely. On the other hand, if we waited near her till
she had been plundered and released, neither the fog nor the night
would last forever.

“My countrymen shall beat them off,” I affirmed confidently.
“ At any rate, let us be on the spot. We may take a hand. And
remember, Tomas, they are not led by you, this time.”

“True,” he said, mollified. ‘“‘ But one thing more deserves the
consideration of your worship. . . If we follow this plan, we
take the senorita among flying bullets. And lead, alas! unlike steel,
is blind, or that illustrious man would not now be dead. If we
wait here, the sefiorita, at least, shall take no harm from these
ruffians, as I have said.”

“ Are you afraid of the bullets?” I asked Seraphina.

Before she had answered, Castro hissed at me:

“Oh, you unspeakable English. Would you sacrifice the daugh-
ter, too, only because she is brave? ”

His sinister allusion made my blood boil with rage, and sud-
denly run cold in my veins. Swathed in the brilliant cloud, we
_ heard the sounds of quarreling and scrambling die away; cries of
“ Ready! ready!’ an unexpected and brutal laugh. Seraphina
leaned forward.

“Tomas, I wish this thing. I command it,” she whispered im-
periously. ‘‘ We shall help these English on the ship. We must;
I command it. For these are now my people.”

I heard him mutter to himself, “ Ah, dear shade of my Carlos.
Her people. Where are now mine?” But he shipped his oar,
and sat waiting.

In the moment before the picaroons actually started, I became
the prey of the most intense anxiety. I knew we were to seaward
of the cluster. But of our position relatively to the boats, and to
the English ship they would make for, I was profoundly ignorant.
The dingey might be lying right in the way. Before I could
master the sort of disorder I was thrown into by that thought—
which, strange to say, had not occurred to me till then—with a

shrill whistle Manuel led off.

214 ROMANCE

We are always inclined to trust our eyes rather than our ears;
and such is the conventional temper in which we receive the im-
pression of our senses that I had no idea they were so near us.
The destruction of my illusory feeling of distance was the most
startling thing in the world. Instantly, it seemed, with the second
swing and plash of the oars, the boats were right upon us. “They
went clear. It was like being grazed by a fall of rocks. I seemed
to feel the wind of the rush.

The rapid clatter of rowing, the excited hum of voices, the
violent commotion of the water, passed by us with an impetuosity
that took my breath away. They had started in a bunch. There
must have been amongst them at least one crew of negroes, because
somebody was beating a tambourine smartly, and the rowers cho-
rused in a quick, panting undertone, “ Ho, ho, talibambo. . . .
Ho, ho, talibambo.” One of the boats silhouetted herself for an
instant, a row of heads swaying back and forth, towered over
astern by a full-length figure as straight as an arrow. A retreating
voice thundered, “Silence!” The sounds and the forms faded
together in the fog with amazing swiftness.

Seraphina, her cloak off, her head bare, stared forward after
the fleeting murmurs and shadows we were pursuing. Sometimes
she warned us, “‘ More to the left”; or, “ Faster!”? We had to
put forth our best, for Manuel, as if in the very wantonness of
confidence, had set a tremendous pace.

I suppose he took his first direction, by the light on the point.
I cannot tell what guided him after that feeble sheen had become
buried in the fog; but there was no check in the speed, no sign
of hesitation. We followed in the track of the sound, and, for the
most part, kept in sight of the elusive shadow of the sternmost
boat. Often, in a denser belt of fog, the sounds of rowing became
muffled almost to extinction; or we seemed to hear them all round
and, startled, checked our speed. Dark apparitions of boats would
surge up on all sides in a most inexplicable way; to the right; to
the left; even coming from behind. ‘They appeared real, unmis-
takable, and, before we had time to dodge them, vanished utterly.
Then we had to spurt desperately after the grind of the oars,
caught, just in time, in an unexpected direction.

And then we lost them. We pulled frantically. Seraphina had

PART FOURTH 215

been urging us, “ Faster! faster!’ From time to time I would ask
her, “Can you see them?” “Not yet,” she answered curtly.
The perspiration poured down my face. Castro’s panting was
like the wheezing of bellows at my back. Suddenly, in a despair-
ing tone, she said:

“Stop! I can neither see nor hear anything now.”

We feathered our oars at once, and fell to listening with lowered
heads. ‘The ripple of the boat’s way expired slowly. A great
white stillness hung slumbrously over the sea.

It was inconceivable. We pulled once or twice with extreme
energy for a few minutes after imaginary whistles or shouts. Once
I heard them passing our bows. But it was useless; we stopped,
and the moon, from within the mistiness of an immense halo,
looked dreamily upon our heads.

Castro grunted, “ Here is an end of your plan, Sefior Don
Juan.”

The peculiar and ghastly hopelessness of our position could not
be better illustrated than by this fresh difficulty. We had lost
touch—with a murderous gang that had every inducement not to
spare our lives. And positively it was a misfortune; an abandon-
ment. I refused to admit to myself its finality, as if it had reflected
upon the devotion of tried friends. I repeated to Castro that we
should become aware of them directly—probably even nearer than
we wished. And, at any rate, we were certain of a mighty loud
noise when the attack on the ship began. She, at least, could not
be very far now. “ Unless, indeed,” I admitted with exaspera-
tion, ‘““we are to suppose that your imbecile Lugarenos have
missed their prey and got themselves as utterly lost as we our-
selves.”

I was irritated—by his nodding plume; by his cold, perfunctory,
as if sleepy mutters, ‘‘ Possibly, possibly, puede ser.” He retorted:
“Your English generosity could wish your countrymen no better
luck than that my Lugarefos, as your worship pleases to call them,
should miss their way. They are hungry for loot—with much
fasting. And it is hunger that makes your wolf fly straight at the
throat.”

All the time Seraphina breathed no word. But when I raised
my voice, she put out a hushing hand to my arm. And, from her

216 ROMANCE

intent pose, from the turn of her shadowy head, I knew that she
was peering and listening loyally.

Minutes passed—very few, I dare say—and brought no sound.
The restlessness of waiting made us dip our oars in a haphazard
stroke, without aim, without the means of judging whether we
pulled to seaward, inshore, north, or south, or only in a circle.
Once we went excitedly in chase of some splashing that must have
been a leaping fish. I was hanging my head over my idle oar when
Seraphina touched me.

“T see!” she said, pointing over the bows.

Both Castro and I, peering horizontally over the water, did not
see anything. Not ashadow. Moreover, if they were so near, we
ought to have heard something.

“I believe it is land!”’ she murmured. “ You are looking too
low, Juan.”

As soon as I looked up I saw it, too, dark and beetling, like the
overhang of a low cliff. Where on earth had we blundered to?
For a moment I was confounded. Fiery reflections from a light
played faintly above that shape. Then I recognized what I was
looking at. We had found the ship.

The fog was so shallow that up there the upper bulk of a heavy,
square stern, the very rails and stanchions crowning it like a balus-
trade, jutted out in the misty sheen like the balcony of an invisible
edifice, for the lines of her run, the sides of her hull, were plunged
in the dense white layer below. And, throwing back my head, I
traced even her becalmed sails, pearly gray pinnacles of shadow
uprising, tall and motionless, towards the moon.

A redness wavered over her, as from a blaze on her deck. Could .
she be on fire? And she was silent as a tomb. Could she be aban-
doned? I had promised myself to dash alongside, but there was a
weirdness in that fragment of a dumb ship hanging out of a fog.
We pulled only a stroke or two nearer to the stern, and stopped.
I remembered Castro’s warning—the blindness of flying lead; but
it was the profound stillness that checked me. It seemed to portend
something inconceivable. I hailed, tentatively, as if I had not ex-
pected to be answered, “‘ Ship, ahoy! ”

Neither was I answered by the instantaneous, ‘‘ Hallo,” of usual -
watchfulness, though she was not abandoned. Indeed, my hail

PART FOURTH 217

made a good many men jump, to judge by the sounds and the
words that came to me from above. “What? What? A hail?”
“Boat near?” “In English, sir.”

“ Dive for the captain, one of you,” an authoritative voice di-
rected. “‘ He’s just run below for a minute. Don’t frighten the
missus. Call him out quietly.”

Talking, in confidential undertones, followed.

“See him?” “Can’t, sir.” “ What’s the dodge, I wonder.”
“ Astern, I think, sir.” ‘‘ D n this fog, it lies as thick as pea-
soup on the water.”

I waited, and after a perplexed sort of pause, heard a stern

“ Keep off.”

CHAPTER III

HEY did not suspect how close I was to them. And

their temper struck me at once as unsafe. “They seemed

very much on the alert, and, as I imagined, disposed to
precipitate action. I called out, deadening my voice warily:

“T am an Englishman, escaping from the pirates here. We
want your help.”

To this no answer was made, but by that time the captain had
come on deck. The dingey must have drifted in a little closer,
for I made out behind the shadowy rail one, two, three figures in
a row, looming bulkily above my head, as men appear enlarged in
mist.

“* Englishman,” he says. “‘ That’s very likely,” pronounced a
new voice. They held a hurried consultation up there, of which
I caught only detached sentences, and the general tone of concern.
“Tt’s perfectly well known that there 7s an Englishman here. .
Aye, a runaway second mate. . . . Killed a man in a Bristol
ship. . . . What was his name, now?”

““Won’t you answer me?”’ I called out.

“Aye, we will answer you as soon as we see you. . . . Keep
your eyes skinned fore and aft on deck there. . . . Ready, boys?”

“ All ready, sir’; voices came from further off.

“ Listen to me,” I entreated.

Someone called out briskly, “ This is a bad place for pretty tales
of Englishmen in distress.) We know very well where we are.”

“You are off Rio Medio,” I began anxiously; ‘‘ and I i

“Speaks the truth like a Briton, anyhow,” commented a lazy
drawl.

“TI would send another man to the pump,” a reflective voice
suggested. “‘ To make sure of the force, Mr. Sebright, you know.”
“ Certainly, sir. . . . Another hand to the brakes, bo’sun.”

“I have been held captive on shore,” I said. ‘I escaped, this
evening, three hours ago.”

218

PART FOURTH | 2I9

“And found this ship in the fog? You made a good shot at it,
didn’t you?”

“It’s no time for trifling, I swear to you,” I continued. “ They
are out looking for you, in force. I’ve heard them. I was with
them when they started.”

“T believe you.”

“They seem to have missed the ship.”

“So you came to have a friendly cut meantime. That’s kind.
Beastly weather, aint it?”

“I want to come aboard,” I shouted. ‘‘ You must be crazy not
to believe me.”

“But we do believe every single word you say,” bantered the
Sebright voice with serenity.

Suddenly another struck in, “ Nichols, I call to mind, sir.”

“ Of course, of course. This is the man.”

“My name’s not Nichols,” I protested.

“ Now, now. You mustn’t begin to lie,” remonstrated Sebright.
Somebody laughed discreetly.

“You are mistaken, on my honor,” I said. ‘‘ Nichols left Rio
Medio some time ago.’

“ About three hours, eh?” came the drawl of insufferable folly
in these precious minutes.

It was clear that Manuel had gone astray, but I feared not for
long. They would spread out in search. And now I had found
this hopeless ship, it seemed impossible that anybody else could
miss her.

“You may be boarded any moment by more than a dozen boats.
I warn you solemnly. Will you let me come?”

A low whistle was heard on board. ‘They were impressed,
“Why should he tell us this?” an undertone inquired.

“Why the devil shouldn’t he? It’s no great news, is it? Some
scoundrelly trick. ‘This man’s up to any dodge. Why, the Jane
was taken in broad day by two boats that pretended they were
going to sell vegetables.”

“ Look out, or by heavens you’ll be taken by surprise. There’s
a lot of them,” I said as impressively as I could.

“Look out, look out. ‘There’s a lot of them,
in a sort of panic.

”” someone yelled

220 ROMANCE

“Oh, that’s your game,” Sebright’s voice said to me. “‘ Frighten
us, eh? Never you mind what this skunk says, men. Stand fast.
We shall take a lot of killing.” He was answered by a sort of
pugnacious uproar, a clash of cutlasses and laughter, as if at some
joke.

‘“That’s right, boys; mind and send them away with clean faces,
you gunners. Jack, you keep a good lookout for that poor dis-
tressed Englishman. What’s that? a noise in the fog? Stand
by. Now then, cook! .. .”

“ All ready to dish up, sir,” a voice answered him.

It was like a sort of madness. Were they thinking of eating?
Even at that the English talk made my heart expand—the homeli-
ness of it. I seemed to know all their voices, as if I had talked to
each man before. It brought back memories, like the voices of
friends. But there was the strange irrelevancy, levity, the enmity
—the irrational, baffling nature of the anguishing conversation, as
if with the unapproachable men we meet in nightmares.

We in the dingey, as well as those on board, were listening
anxiously. A profound silence reigned for a time.

“T don’t care for myself,” I tried once more, speaking distinctly.
“But a lady in the boat here is in great danger, too. Won’t you
do something for a woman?”

I perceived, from the sort of stir on board, that this caused some
sensation.

“Or is the whole ship’s company afraid to let one little boat
come alongside?” I added, after waiting for an answer.

A throat was cleared on board mildly, ‘Hem .. . you see,
we don’t know who you are.”

“T’ve told you who I am. The lady is Spanish.”

“Just so. But there are Englishmen and Englishmen in these
days. Some of them keep very bad company ashore, and others
afloat. I couldn’t think of taking you on board, unless I know
something more of you.”

I seemed to detect an intention of malice in the mild voice. The
more so that I overheard a rapid interchange of mutterings up
there. “See him yet?” “Not a thing, sir.” “ Wait, I say.”

Nothing could overcome the fixed idea of these men, who seemed
to enjoy so much the cleverness of their suspicions. It was the

PART FOURTH 221

most dangerous of tempers to deal with. It made them as un-
trustworthy as so many lunatics. “They were capable of anything,
of decoying us alongside, and stoving the bottom out of the boat,
and drowning us before they discovered their mistake, if they ever
did. Even as it was, there was danger; and yet I was extremely
loath to give her up. It was impossible to give her up. But what
were we to do? What to say? How to act?

“Castro, this is horrible,” I said blankly. That he was be-
ginning to chafe, to fret, and shuffle his feet only added to my
dismay. He might begin at any moment to swear in Spanish, and
that was sure to bring a shower of lead, blind, fired blindly. ‘‘ We
have nothing to expect from the people of that ship. We cannot
even get on board.”

“Not without Manuel’s help, it seems,” he said bitterly.
“ Strange, is it not, sefor? Your countrymen—your excellent and
virtuous countrymen. Generous and courageous and _perspica-
cious.”

Seraphina said suddenly, ‘‘ They have reason. It is well for
them to be suspicious of us in this place.” She had a tone of calm
reproof, and of faith.

“They shall be of more use when they are dead,” Castro mut-
tered. ‘‘ The sefior’s other dead countrymen served us well.”

“T shall give you great, very great sums of money,” Seraphina
suddenly cried towards the ship. ‘I am the Seforita Seraphina
Riego.”

“There is a woman—that’s a woman’s voice, I’ll swear,” I heard
them exclaim on board, and I cried again:

“Yes, yes. There is a woman.”

“T dare say. But where do you come in? You are a distressed
Englishman, aren’t you?” a voice came back.

“You shall let us come up on your ship,” Seraphina said. “I
shall come myself, alone—Seraphina Riego.”

“Eh, what?” the voice asked.

I felt a little wind on the back of my head. There was desperate
hurry.

“ We are escaping to get married,” I called out.

They were beginning to shout orders on the ship.

“Oh, you’ve come to the wrong shop. A church is what you

’

222 ROMANCE

want for that trouble,” the voice called back brutally, through
the other cries of orders to square the yards.

I shouted again, but my voice must have been drowned in the
creaking of blocks and yards. ‘They were alert enough for every
chance of getting away—for every flaw of wind. Already the
ship was less distinct, as if my eyes had grown dim. By the time
a voice on board her cried, “‘ Belay,” faintly, she had gone from
my sight. Then the puff of wind passed away, too, and left us
more alone than ever, with only the small disk of the moon poised
vertically above the mists.

“ Listen,” said Tomas Castro, after what seemed an eternity of
crestfallen silence.

He need not have spoken; there could be no doubt that Manuel
had lost himself, and my belief is that the ship had sailed right into
the midst of the flotilla. There was an unmistakable character of
surprise in the distant tumult that arose suddenly, and as suddenly
ceased for a space of a breath or two.

“ Now, Castro,” I shouted.

“ Ha! bueno!”

We gave way with a vigor that seemed to lift the dingey out of
the water. The uproar gathered volume and fierceness.

From the first it was a hand-to-hand contest, engaged in sud-
denly, as if the assailants had at once managed to board in a body,
and, as it were, in one unanimous spring. No shots had been fired.
Too far to hear the blows, and seeing nothing as yet of the ship,
we seemed to be hastening towards a deadly struggle of voices, of
shadows with leathern throats; every cry heard in battle was there
—rage, encouragement, fury, hate, and pain. And those of pain
were amazingly distinct. They were yells; they were howls. And
suddenly, as we approached the ship, but before we could make
out any sign of her, we came upon a boat. We had to swerve to
clear her. She seemed to have dropped out of the fight in utter
disarray; she lay with no oars out, and full of men who writhed
and tumbled over each other, shrieking as if they had been flayed.
Above the writhing figures in the middle of the boat, a tall man,
upright in the stern-sheets, raved awful imprecations and shook his
fists above his head.

The blunt dingey foamed past that vision within an oar’s length,

PART FOURTH 223

no more, making straight for the clamor of the fight. The last
puff of wind must have thinned the fog in the ship’s track; for,
standing up, face forward to pull stroke, I saw her come out, stern-
on to us, from truck to water-line, mistily tall and motionless, but
resounding with the most fierce and desperate noises. A cluster
of empty boats clung low to her port side, raft-like and vague on
the water.

We heard now, mingled with the fury and hate of shouts rever-
berating from the placid sails, mighty thuds and crashes, as though
it had been a combat with clubs and battle-axes.

Evidently, in the surprise and haste of the unexpected coming
together, they had been obliged to board all on the same side. As
I headed for the other a big boat, full of men, with many oars, shot
across our bows, and vanished round the ship’s counter in the
twinkling of an eye. The defenders, engaged on the port side, were
going to be taken in the rear. We were then so close to the
counter that the cries of ‘‘ Death, death,” rang over our heads. A
voice on the poop said furiously in English, ‘Stand fast, men.”
Next moment, we, too, rounded the quarter only twenty feet behind
the big boat, but with a slightly wider sweep.

I said, ‘“‘ Have the pistols ready, Seraphina.” And she answered
quite steadily:

“They are ready, Juan.”

I could not have believed that any handiwork of man afloat
could have got so much way through the water. ‘To this very
day I am not rid of the absurd impression that, at that particular
moment, the dingey was traveling with us as fast as a cannon-ball.
No sooner round than we were upon them. We were upon them
so fast that I had barely the time to fling away my oar, and close
my grip on the butt of the pistols Seraphina pressed into my hand
from behind. Castro, too, had dropped his oar, and, turning as
swift as a cat, crouched in the bows. I saw his good arm darting
out towards their boat.

They had cast a grapnel cleverly, and, swung abreast of the
main chains, were grimly busied in boarding the undefended side
in silence. One had already his leg over the ship’s rail, and below
him three more were clambering resolutely, one above the other.
The rest of them, standing up in a body with their faces to the

224 ROMANCE

ship, were so oblivious of everything in their purpose, that they
staggered all together: to the shock of the dingey, heavily, as if
the earth had reeled under them.

Castro knew what he was doing. I saw his only hand:<hop along
the gunwale, dragging our cockle-shell forward very swiftly. The
tottering Spaniards turned their heads, and for a moment we looked
at each other in silence.

I was too excited to shout; the surprise seemed to have deprived
them of their senses, and they all had the same grin of teeth closed
upon the naked blades of their knives, the same stupid stare fas-
tened upon my eyes. I pulled the trigger in the nearest face, and
the terrific din of the fight going on above us was overpowered by
the report of the pistol, as if by a clap of thunder. The man’s
gaping mouth dropped the knife, and he stood stiffly long enough
for the thought, “I’ve missed him,” to flash through my mind
before he tumbled clean out of the boat without touching anything,
like a wooden dummy tipped by the heels. His headlong fall sent
the water flying high over the stern of the dingey. With the
second barrel I took a long shot at the man sitting amazed, astride
of the rail above. I saw him double up suddenly, and fall inboard
sideways, but the fellow following him made a convulsive effort,
and leapt out of sight on to the deck of the ship. I dropped the
discharged weapon, and fired the first barrel of the other at the
upper of the two men clinging halfway up the ship’s side. To that
one shot they both vanished as if by enchantment, the fellow I had
hit knocking off his friend below. The crash of their fall was
followed by a great yell.

These had been all nearly point-blank shots, and, anyhow, I had
had a good deal of pistol practice. Macdonald had a little gallery
at Horton Pen. The Lugarefios, huddled together in the boat,
were only able to moan with terror. They made soft, pitiful, com-
plaining noises. ‘Two or three took headers overboard, like so
many frogs, and then one began to squeak exactly like a rat.

By that time, Castro, with his fixed blade, had cut their grapnel
rope close to the ring. As the ship kept forging ahead all the time,
the boat of the pirate bumped away lightly from between the
vessel and our dingey, and we remained alongside, holding to the
end of the severed line. I sent my fourth shot after them, and

PART FOURTH 225

got in exchange a scream and a howl of “‘ Mercy! mercy! we sur-
render!”’ She swung clear of the quarter, all hushed, and faded
into the mist and moonlight, with the head and arms of a motion-
less man hanging grotesquely over the bows.

Leaving Seraphina with Castro, and sticking the remaining
pair of pistols in my belt, I swarmed up the rope. The moon, the
lights of several lanthorns, the glare from the open doors, mingled ‘
violently in the steamy fog between the high bulwarks of the ship.
But the character of the contest was changing, even as I paused
on the rail to get my bearings. The fellow who had leapt on
board to escape my shot had bolted across the deck to his friends
on the other side, yelling:

“Fly, fly!) The heretics are coming, shooting from the sea. All
is lost. Fly, oh fly!”

He had jumped straight overboard, but the infection of his panic
was already visible. ‘The cries of “ Muerte, muerte! Death,
death! ” had ceased, and the Englishmen were cheering ferociously.
In a moment, under my eyes, the seamen, who had been holding
their own with difficulty in a shower of defensive blows, began
to dart forward, striking out with their fists, catching with their
hands. I jumped upon the main hatch, and found myself in the
skirt of the final rush.

A tall Lugarefio had possessed himself of one of the ship’s cap-
stan bars, and, less craven than the others, was flourishing it on
high, aiming at the head of a sailor engaged in throttling a negro
whom he held at the full length of his immense arms. I fired, and
the Lugarefio tumbled down with all the appearance of having
knocked himself over with the bar he had that moment uplifted.
It rested across his neck as he lay stretched at my feet.

I was not able to effect anything more after this, because the
sailor, after rushing his limp antagonist overboard with terrific
force, turned raging for more, caught sight of me—an evident
stranger—and flew at my throat. He was English, but as he
squeezed my windpipe so hard that I couldn’t utter a word I
brought the butt of my pistol upon his thick skull without the
slightest compunction, for, indeed, I had to deal with a powerful
man, well able to strangle me with his bare hands, and very de-
termined to achieve the feat. He grunted under the blow, reeled

226 ROMANCE

away a few steps, then, charging back at once, gripped me round
the body, and tried to lift me off my feet. We fell together into
a warm puddle.

~-I had no idea spilt blood kept its warmth so much. And the
quantity of it was appalling; the deck seemed to swim with gore,
and we simply weltered in it. We rolled rapidly along the reeking
scuppers, amongst the feet of a lot of men who were hopping about
us in the greatest excitement, the hearty thuds of blows, aimed with
all sorts of weapons, just missing my head. ‘The pistol was kicked
out of my hand.

The horror of my position was very great. Must I kill the
man? must I die myself in this miserable and senseless manner?
I tried to shout, “‘ Drag this maniac off me.”

He was pinning my arms to my body. I saw the furious faces
bending over me, the many hands murderously uplifted. They,
of course, couldn’t tell that I wasn’t one of the men who had
boarded them, and my life had never been in such jeopardy. I felt
all the fury of rage and mortification. Was I to die like this,
villainously trodden underfoot, on the threshold of safety, of
liberty, of love? And, in those moments of violent struggle I saw,
as one sees in moments of wisdom and meditation, my soul—all
life, lying under the shadow of a perfidious destiny. And Sera-
phina was there in the boat, waiting for me. The sea! The boat!
They were in another land, and I, I should no more . . . never
any more. . . . A sharp voice called, ‘‘ Back there, men. Steady.
Take him alive.” ‘They dragged me up.

I needn’t relate by what steps, from being terribly handled as
a captive, I was promoted to having my arms shaken off in the
character of a savior. But I got any amount of praise at last,
though I was terribly out of breath—at the very last gasp, as you
might say. A man, smooth-faced, well-knit, very elated and
buoyant, began talking to me endlessly. He was mighty happy,
and anyhow he could talk to me, because I was past doing any-
thing but taking a moment’s rest. He said I had come in the nick
time, and was quite the best of fellows.

“Tf you had a fancy to be called the Archbishop of Canterbury,
we'd ‘your Grace’ you. I am the mate, Sebright. The captain’s

PART FOURTH 227

gone_in to show himself to the missus; she wouldn’t like to have him
too much chipped. . . . Wonderful is the love of woman. She
sat up a bit later to-night with her fancy-sewing to see what might
turn up. I told her at tea-time she had better go in early and shut
her stateroom door, because if any of the Dagos chanced to come
aboard, I couldn’t be responsible for the language of my crowd.
We are supposed to keep clear of profanity this trip, she being a
niece of Mr. Perkins of Bristol, our owner, and a Methodist. But,
hang it all, there’s reason in all things. You can’t have a ship like
a chapel—though she would. Oh, bless you, she would, even when
we're beating off these picaroons.”

I was sitting on the afterhatch, and leaning my head on my
arms. :

“Feel bad? Do you? Handled you like a bag of shakings.
Well, the boys got their monkey up, hammering the Dagos. Here
you, Mike, go look along the deck, for a double-barreled pistol.
Move yourself a bit. Feel along under the spars.”

There was something authoritative and knowing in his person-
ality; boyishly elated and full of business.

“We must put the ship to rights. You don’t think they’d come
back for another taste? ‘The blessed old deck’s afloat. ‘That’s my
little dodge, boiling water for these Dagos, if they come. So I got
the cook to fire up, and we put the suction-hose of the fire pump
into the boiler, and we filled the coppers and the kettles. Not a
bad notion, eh? But ten times as much wouldn’t have been enough,
and the hose burst at the third stroke, so that only one boat got
anything to speak of. But Lord, she dropped out of the ruck as if
she’d been swept with langridge. Squealed like a litter of pigs,
didn’t they?”

What I had taken for blood had been the water from the burst
hose. I must say I was relieved. My new friend bubbled any
amount ef joyous information into me before I quite got my wind
back. He rubbed his hands and clapped me on the shoulder. But
his heart was kind, and he became concerned at my collapsed state.

“TI say, you don’t think my chaps broke some of your ribs, do
you? Let me feel.”

And then I managed to tell him something of Seraphina that he

would listen to.

228 ROMANCE

“ What, what?” he said. “ Oh, heavens and earth! there’s your
girl. Of course. . . . Hey, bo’sun, rig a whip and chair on the
yardarm to take a lady on board. Bear a hand. A lady! yes, a
lady. Confound it, don’t lose your wits, man. Look over the
starboard rail, and you will see a lady alongside with a Dago in a
small boat. Let the Dago come on board, too; the gentleman here
says he’s a good sort. Now, do you understand?”

He talked to me a good deal more; told me that they had made
a prisoner—“ a tall, comical chap; wears his hair like an old aunt
of mine, a bunch of curls flapping on each side of his face ”’—and
then said that he must go and report to Captain Williams, who had
gone into his wife’s stateroom. ‘The name struck me. I said:

“Ts this ship the Lion? ”

“* Aye, aye. That’s her. She is,” several seamen answered to-
gether, casting curious glances from their work.

“Tell your captain my name is Kemp,” I shouted after Sebright
with what strength of lung I had.

What luck! Williams was the jolly little dip’ s captain I was
to have dined with on the day of execution on Kingston Point—
the day I had been kidnaped. It seemed ages ago. I wanted to
get to the side to look after Seraphina, but I simply couldn’t re-
member how to stand. I sat on the hatch, looking at the seamen.

They were clearing the ropes, collecting the lamps, picking up
knives, handspikes, crowbars, swabbing the decks with squashy
flaps. A bare-footed, barearmed fellow, holding a bundle of brass-
hilted cutlasses under his arm, had lost himself in the contempla-
tion of my person.

“Where are you bound to?” I inquired at large, and everybody
showed a friendly alacrity in answer.

“Havana.” “ Havana, sir.” “ Havana’s our next port. Aye,
Havana.”
The deck rang with modulations of the name. *

I heard a loud, “ Alas,” sighed out behind me. A distracted,
stricken voice repeated twice in Spanish, ‘‘ Oh, my greatness; oh,
my greatness.” Then, shiveringly, in a tone of profound self-
communion, “I have a greatly parched throat,” it said. Harshly
jovial voices answered :

“Stow your lingo and come before the captain, Step along.”

PART FOURTH 229

A prisoner, conducted aft, stalked reluctantly into the light be-
tween two short, bustling sailors. Disheveled black hair like a
damaged peruke, mournful, yellow face, enormous stag’s eyes
straining down on me. I recognized Manuel-del-Popolo. At the
same moment he sprang back, shrieking, ‘‘ This is a miracle of the
devil—of the devil.”

The sailors fell to tugging at his arms savagely, asking, “‘ What’s
come to you?” and, after a short struggle that shook his tatters
and his raven locks tempestuously like a gust of wind, he submitted
to be walked up; repeating:

“Ts it you, sefior? Isit you? Is it you?”

One of his shoulders was bare from neck to elbow; at every step
one of his knees and part of a lean thigh protruded their nakedness
through a large rent; a strip of grimy, blood-stained linen, torn
right down to the waist, dangled solemnly in front of his legs.
There was a horrible raw patch amongst the roots of his hair just
above his temple; there was blood in his nostrils, the stamp of
excessive anguish on his features, a sort of guarded despair in his
eye. His voice sank while he said again, twice:

“Ts it you? Is it you?” And then, for the last time, “Is it
you?” he repeated in a whisper.

The seamen formed a wide ring, and, looking at me, he talked
to himself confidentially.

“ Escaped—the Inglez! ‘Then thou art doomed, Domingo.
Domingo, thou art doomed. Dom . . . Sefior!”’

The change of tone, his effort to extend his hands towards me,
surprised us all. I looked away.

“ Hold hard! Hold him, mate!”

“‘ Sefior, condescend to behold my downfall. I am led here to
the slaughter, sefior! To the slaughter, sefior! Pity! Grace!
Mercy! And only a short while ago—behold. Slaughter .. .
I... Manuel. Seftor, I am universally admired—with a
parched throat, sefior. I could compose a song that would
make a priest weep. . . . A greatly parched throat, sefior,” he
added piteously.

I could not help turning my head. I had not been used half as
hard as he. It was enough to look at him to believe in the dryness of
his throat. Under the matted mass of his hair, he was grinning in

230 ROMANCE

amiable agony, and his globular eyes yearned upon me with a
motionless and glassy luster.

“You have not forgotten me, sefior? Forget Manuel! Im-
possible! Manuel, sefior. For the love of God. Manuel.
Manuel-del-Popolo. I did sing, deign to remember. I offered
you my fidelity, sefior. As you are a caballero, I charge you to
remember. Save me, sefior. Speak to those men. . . . For the
sake of your honor, sefior.”

His voice was extraordinarily harsh—not his own. Apparently,
he believed that he was going to be cut to pieces there and then
by the sailors. He seemed to read it in their faces, shuddering
and shrinking whenever he raised his eyes. But all these faces
gaped with good-natured wonder, except the faces of his two
guardians, and these expressed a state of conscientious worry.
They were ridiculously anxious to suppress his sudden contortions, ,
as one would some gross indecency. In the scuffle they hissed and
swore under their breath. ‘They were scandalized and made un-
happy by his behavior.

“‘ Are you ready down there?” roared the bo’sun in the waist. —

“ Olla raight! Olla raight! Waita a leetle,” I heard Castro’s
voice coming, as if from under the ship. I said coldly a few words
about the certain punishment awaiting a pirate in Havana, and got
on to my feet stiffly. But Manuel was too terrified to understand
what I meant. He attempted to snatch at me with his imprisoned
hands, and got for his pains a severe jerking, which made his head
roll about his shoulders weirdly.

“Pity, sefor!” he screamed. And then, with low fervor,
“Don’t go away. Listen! I am profound. Perhaps the sefior
did not know that? Mercy! I am aman of intrigue. A politico.
You have escaped, and I rejoice at it.” . . . He bared his fangs,
and frothed like a mad dog. . . . “‘ Sefior, I am made happy be-
cause of the love I bore you from the first—and Domingo, who let
you slip out of the Casa, is doomed. He is doomed. Thou art
doomed, Domingo! But the excessive affection for your noble
person inspires my intellect with a salutary combination. Wait,
sefior! A moment! An instant! . .. A combination! .. .”

He gasped as though his heart had burst. The seamen, open-
mouthed, were slowly narrowing their circle.

PART FOURTH 231

“Can’t he gabble!”? remarked someone patiently.

His eyes were starting out of his head. He spoke with fearful
rapidity.

“. . . There’s no refuge from the anger of the Juez but the
grave—the grave—the grave! . . . Ha! ha! Go into thy grave,
Domingo. But you, sefior—listen to my supplications—where will
you go? To Havana. The Juez is there, and I call the maledic-
tion of the priests on my head if you, too, are not doomed. Life!
Liberty! Sefior, let me go, and I shall run—I shall ride, sefior—
I shall throw myself at the feet of the Juez, and say . . . I shall
say I killed you. I am greatly trusted by the reason of my superior
intelligence. I shall say, ‘Domingo let him go—but he is dead.
Think of him no more—of that Inglez who escaped—from Do-
mingo. Do not look for him. I, your own Manuel, have killed
him.’ Give me my life for yours, sefior. I shall swear I had killed
you with this right hand! Ah!”

He hung on my lips breathless, with a face so distorted that,
_ though it might have been death alone he hated, he looked, indeed,
as if impatient to set to and tear me to pieces with his long teeth.
Men clutching at straws must have faces thus convulsed by an
eager and despairing hope. His silence removed the spell—the
spell of his incredible loquacity. I heard the boatswain’s hoarse
tones:

“ Hold on well, ma’am. Right! Walk away steady with that
whip! ”

I ran limping forward.

“ High enough,” he rumbled; and I received Seraphina into my
arms.

CHAPTER IV

SAID, “This is home, at last. It is all over”; and she
stood by me on the deck. She pushed the heavy black cloak
from over her head, and her white face appeared above the
dim black shadow of her mourning. She looked silently round her
on the mist, the groups of rough men, the spatterings of light that
were like violence, too. She said nothing, but rested her hand on
my arm. :

She had her immense griefs, and this was the home I offered her.
She looked back at the side. I thought she would have liked to
be in the boat again. I said: ;

“The people in this ship are my old friends. You can trust
them—and me.”

Tomas Castro, clambering leisurely over the side, followed. As
soon as his feet touched the deck, he threw the corner of his cloak
across his left shoulder, bent down half the rim of his hat, and
assumed the appearance of a short, dark conspirator, overtopped
by the stalwart sailors, who had abandoned Manuel to crowd,
bare-armed, bare-chested, pushing, and craning their necks, round
us.

She said, “I can trust you; it is my duty to trust you, and this is
now my home.”

It was like a definite pronouncement of faith—and of a line of
policy. She seemed, for that moment, quite apart from my love,
a thing very much above me and mine; closed up in an immense
grief, but quite whole-souledly determined to go unflinchingly into .
a new life, breaking quietly with all her past for the sake of the
traditions of all that past.

The sailors fell back to make way for us. It was only by the
touch of her hand on my arm that I had any hope that she trusted
me, me personally, and apart from the commands of the dead
Carlos; the dead father, and the great weight of her dead tradi-
tions that could be never anything any more for her—except a

232

PART FOURTH 2.33

memory. Ah, she stood it very well; her head was erect and proud.
The cabin door opened, and a rigid female figure with dry outlines,
and a smooth head, stood out with severe simplicity against
the light of the cabin door. The light falling on Seraphina
seemed to show her for the first time. A lamentable voice
bellowed:

“ Sefiorita! . . . Sefiorita!”’ and then, in an insinuating, heart-
breaking tone, “‘ Sefiorita! . . .”

She walked quietly past the figure of the woman, and disappeared
in the brilliant light of the cabin. The door closed. I remained
standing there. Manuel, at her disappearance, raised his voice to
a tremendous, incessant yell of despair, as if he expected to make
her hear.

“Senorita . . . proteccion del opprimido; oh, hija de piedad
ao Senorita.”

His lamentable noise brought half the ship round us; the sailors
fell back before the mate, Sebright, walking at the elbow of a
stout man in loose trousers and jacket. “They stopped.

“ An unexpected meeting, Captain Williams,” was all I found
to say to him. He had a constrained air, and shook hands in
awkward silence. '

“How do you do?” he said hurriedly. After a moment he
addded, with a sort of confused, as if official air, “ I hope, Kemp,
you'll be able to explain satisfactorily . . .”

I said, rather off-handedly, ‘ Why, the two men I killed ought
to be credentials enough for all immediate purposes! ”

“That isn’t what I meant,” he said. He spoke rather with a
mumble, and apologetically. It was difficult to see in him any
trace of the roystering Williams who had roared toasts to my
health in Jamaica, after the episode at the Ferry Inn with the
admiral. It was as if, now, he had a weight on his mind. I was
tired. I said:

“‘’Two dead men is more than you or any of your crew can show.
And, as far as I can judge, you did no more than hold your own
till I came.”

He positively stuttered, ‘‘ Yes, yes. But...

I got angry with what seemed stupid obstinacy.

* You'd be having a rope twisted tight round your head, or

”

234 ROMANCE

red-hot irons at the soles of your feet, at this very moment, if it
had not been for us,” I said indignantly.

He wiped his forehead perplexedly. ‘ Phew, how you do talk!”
he remonstrated. ‘‘ What I mean is that my wife...’ He
stopped again, then went on. “She took it into her head to come
with me this voyage. For the first time. . . . And you two
coming alone in an open boat like this! It’s what she isn’t used
to.”

I simply couldn’t get at what he meant; I couldn’t even hear
him very well, because Manuel-del-Popolo was still calling out
to Seraphina in the cabin. Williams and I looked at each other
—he embarrassed, and I utterly confounded.

“ Mrs. Williams thinks it’s irregular,’ Sebright broke in, ‘“ you
and your young lady being alone—in an open boat at night, and
that sort of thing. It isn’t what they approve of at Bristol.”

Manuel suddenly bellowed out, ‘“‘ Sefiorita—save me from their
barbarity. I am a victim. Behold their bloody knives ready—
and their eyes which gloat.”

He shrank convulsively from the fellow with the bundle of cut-
lasses under his arm, who innocently pushed his way close to him;
he threw himself forward, the two sailors hung back on his arms,
nearly sitting on the deck, and he strained dog-like in his intense
fear of immediate death. Williams, however, really seemed to
want an answer to his absurdity that I could not take very seri-
ously. I said:

“What do you expect us to do? Go back to our boat, or
what?”

It seemed to affect him a good deal. ‘‘ Wait till you are caught -
by a good woman yourself,” he mumbled wretchedly.

Was this the roystering Williams? ‘The jolly good fellow?
I wanted to laugh, a little hysterically, because of the worry after -
great fatigue. Was his wife such a terrifying virago? ‘A good
woman,” Williams insisted. I turned my eyes to Sebright, who
looked on amusedly.

“Tt’s all right,” he answered my questioning look. ‘ She’s a
good soul, but she doesn’t see fellows like us in the congregation
she worships with at home.” ‘Then he whispered in my ear,
“Owner’s niece. Older than the skipper. Married him for love.

PART FOURTH 235

Suspects every woman—every man, too, by George, except me,
perhaps. She’s learned life in some back chapel in Bristol. What
can you expect? You go straight into the cabin,” he added.

At that moment the cabin door opened again, and the figure of
the woman I had seen before reappeared against the light.

“IT was allowed to stand under the gate of the Casa, Excellency,
I was in very truth. Oh, turn not the light of your face from
me.” Manuel, who had been silent for a minute, immediately
recommenced his clamor in the hope, I suppose, that it would
reach Seraphina’s ears, now the door was opened.

“What is to be done, Owen?” the woman asked, with a seren-
ity I thought very merciless.

She had precisely the air of having someone “in the house,”
someone rather questionable that you want, at home, to get rid of,
as soon as a very small charity permitted.

“Madam,” I said rather coldly, ‘I appeal to your woman’s
Eompassion. . . .”

“Even thus the arch-enemy sets his snares,”’ she retorted on me
a little tremulously.

“ Sefiorita, I have seen you grow,” Manuel called again. “‘ Your
father, who is with the saints, gave me alms when I was a boy.
Will you let them kill a man to whom your father . . .”

“Snares. All snares. Can she be blessed in going away from
her natural guardians at night, alone, with a young man? How
can we, consistently with our duty . . .”

Her voice was cold and gentle. Even in the imperfect light her
appearance suggested something cold and monachal. ‘The thought -
of what she might have been saying, or, in the subtle way of women,
making Seraphina feel, in there, made me violently angry, but
lucid, too.

“She comes straight from the fresh grave of her father,” I said.
“T am her only guardian.”

Manuel rose to the height of his appeal. ‘‘ Sefiorita, I wor-
shiped your childhood, I threw my hat in the air many times be-
fore your coach, when you drove out all in white, smiling, an angel
from paradise. Excellency, help me. Excel . . .”

A hand was clapped on his mouth then, and we heard only a
great scuffle going on behind us. “The way to the cozy cabin re-

6

236 ROMANCE

mained barred. My heart was kindled by resentment, but by the
power of love my soul was made tranquil, for come what absurdity
might, I had Seraphina safe for the time. “The woman in the
doorway guarded the respectable ship’s cuddy from the unwedded
vagabondage of romance.

““What’s to be done, Owen?” she asked again, but this time a
little irresolutely, I thought. ‘“ You know something of this—
buteissee re:

“My dear, what an idea,” began Williams; and I heard his
helpless mutters, ‘‘ Like a hero—one evening—admiral—old Top-
nambo—nothing of her—on my soul—Lord’s son . . .”

Sebright spoke up from the side. “ We could drive them over-
board together, certainly, Mrs. Williams, but that wouldn’t be
quite proper, perhaps. Put them each in a bag, separately, and
drown them one on each side of the ship, decently. . . .”

“You will not put me off with your ungodly levity, Mr. Se-
bright.”

“ But I am perfectly serious, Mrs. Williams. It may raise a
mutiny amongst these horrid, profane sailors, but I really don’t
see how we are to get rid of them else. The bo’sun has cut adrift
their ramshackle, old sieve of a boat, and she’s now a quarter of a
mile astern, half-full of water. And we can’t give them one of the
ship’s boats to go and get their throats cut ashore. J. Perkins,
Esquire, wouldn’t like it. He would swear something awful, if
the boat got lost. Now, don’t say no, Mrs. Williams. I’ve heard
him myself swear a pound’s worth of oaths for a matter of ten-
pence. You know very well what your uncle is. A perfect Turk
in that way.”

“Don’t be scandalous, Mr. Sebright.”

“But I didn’t begin, Mrs. Williams. It’s you who are raising
all this trouble for nothing; because, as a matter of fact, they did
not come alone. They had a man with them. An elderly, most
respectable man. ‘There he stands, yonder, with a feather in his
hat. Hey! You! Sefor caballero, hidalgo, Pedro—Miguel—
José—what’s your particular saint? Step this way a bit . . .”

Manuel managed to jerk a half-choked ‘“ Excellency,” and
Castro, muffled up to the eyes, began to walk slowly aft, pausing
after each solemn stride. The dark woman in the doorway was

PART FOURTH 227

as effectual as an angel with a flaming sword. She paralyzed me
completely.

Sebright dropped his voice a little. “I don’t see that’s much
worse than going off at six o’clock in the morning to get married
on the quiet; all alone with a man in a hackney coach—you know
you did—and being given away by a perfect stranger.”

“Mr. Sebright! Be quiet! How dare you? . . . Owen!”

Williams made a vague, growling noise, but Sebright, after
muttering hurriedly, “It’s all right, sir,” proceeded with the ut-
most coolness:

“Why, all Bristol knows it! There are those who said that
you got out of the scullery window into the back street. I am
only telling you...”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself to believe such tales,”
she cried in great agitation. ‘I walked out at the gate!”

“Yes. And the gardener’s wife said you must have sneaked the
key off the nail by the side of the cradle—coming to the lodge the
evening before, to see her poor, ailing baby. You ought to know
what love brings the best of us to. And your uncle isn’t a bloody-
handed pirate either. He’s only a good-hearted, hard-swearing old
heathen. And you, too, are good-hearted. Come, Mrs. Williams.
I know you're just longing to tuck this young lady up in bed—
poor thing. Think what she has gone through! You ought to
be fussing with sherry and biscuits and what not—making that
good-for-nothing steward fly round. The beggar is hiding in the
lazarette, I bet. Now then—allow me.”

I got hold of the matter there again. I said—because I felt
that the matter only needed making clear:

“This young lady is the daughter of a great Spanish noble.
Her father was killed by these pirates. I am myself of noble
family, and I am her appointed guardian, and am trying to save
her from a very horrible fate.”

‘She looked at me apprehensively.

“You would be committing a wicked act to try to interfere
with this,” I said.

I suppose I carried conviction.

“T must believe what you say,” she said. She added suddenly,
with a sort of tremulous, warm feeling, “There, there. I don’t

238 ROMANCE

mean to be unkind. I knew nothing, and a married woman can’t
be too careful. For all I could have told, you might have been
a—a libertine; one of the poor lost souls that Satan . . .”

Manuel, as if struggling with the waves, managed to free his lips.

“Excellency, help!” he spluttered, like a drowning man.

“T will give the young lady every care,” Mrs. Williams said,
“until light shall be vouchsafed.”

She shut the door.

“You will go too far, Sebright,” Williams remonstrated ; “‘ and
I’ll have to give you the sack.”

“It’s all right, captain. I can turn her round my little finger,”
said the young man cheerily. ‘‘ Somebody has to do it if you
won’t—or can’t. What shall we do with that yelping Dago? He’s
a distressful beast to have about the decks.”

“Put him in the coal-hole, I suppose, as far as Havana. I
won’t rest till I see him on his way to the gallows. The Captain-
General shall be made sick of this business, or my name isn’t
Williams. Ill make a breeze over it at home. You shall help in
that, Kemp. You aint afraid of big-wigs. Not you. You aint
afraid of anything. . . .”

“ He’s a devil of a fellow, and a dead shot,” threw in Sebright.
“And jolly lucky for us, too, sir. It’s simply marvelous that you
should turn up like this, Mr. Kemp. We hadn’t a grain of powder
that wasn’t caked solid in the canisters. Nothing ’ll take it out
of my head that somebody had got at the magazine while we lay in
Kingston. . . .”

It did not occur to Williams to ask whether I was wounded, or
tired, or hungry. And yet all through the West Indies the dinners
you got on board the Lion were famous in shipping circles. But
festive men of his stamp are often like that. They do it more for
the glory and romance of the hospitality, and he could not, per-
haps, under the circumstances, expect me to intone “ for he is a
jolly good fellow” over the wine. He was by no means a bad
or unfeeling man; only he was not hungry himself, and another’s
mere necessity of that sort failed to excite his imagination. I know
he was no worse than other men, and I have reason to remember
him with gratitude; but, at the time, I was surprised and indig-
nant at the extraordinary way he took my presence for granted,

PART FOURTH 239

as if I had come off casually in a shore boat to idle away an hour
or two on board. Since his wife appeared satisfied, he did not
seem to desire any explanation. I felt as if I had for him
no independent existence. When I had ceased to be a source
of domestic difficulty, I became a precious sort of convenience, a
most welcome person (“‘an English gentleman to back me up,”
he repeated several times), who would help him to make “ these
old women at the Admiralty sit up!” A burning shame, this! It
had gone on long enough, God knows, but if they were to tackle
an old trader, like the Lion, now, it was time the whole country
should hear of it. His owner, J. Perkins, his wife’s uncle, wasn’t
the man to go to sleep over the job. Parliament should hear of
it. Most fortunate I was there to be produced—eye-witness—
nobleman’s son. He knew I could speak up in a good cause.

“And by the way, Kemp,” he said, with sudden annoyance,
recollecting himself, as it were, “you never turned up for that
dinner—sent no word, nor anything. . . .”

Williams had been talking to me, but it was with Sebright that
I felt myself growing intimate. “The young mate of the Lion
stood by, very quiet, listening, with a capable smile. Now he said,
in a tone of dry comment:

“ Jolly sight more useful turning up here.”

“T was kidnaped away from Ramon’s back shop, if that’s a
sufficient apology. It’s rather a long story.”

“Well, you can’t tell it on deck, that’s very clear,” Sebright
had to shout to me. ‘‘ Not while this infernal noise—what the
deuce’s up? It sounds more like a dog-fight than anything else.”

As we ran towards the main hatch I recognized the aptness of
the comparison. It was that sort of vicious, snarling, yelping
clamor which arises all at once and suddenly dies.

“Castro! Thou Castro!”

“ Malediction . . . My eyelids . . .”

“Thou! Englishman’s dog!”

ta). wPorce.”’

The voices ceased. Castro ran tiptoeing lightly, mantled in
ample folds. He assumed his hat with a brave tap, crouched
swiftly inside his cloak. It touched the deck all round in a black
cone surmounted by a peering, quivering head. Quick as thought

240 ROMANCE

he hopped and sank low again. Everybody watched with wonder
this play, as of some large and diabolic toy. For my part, know-
ing the deadly purpose of these preliminaries, I was struck with
horror. Had he chosen to run on him at once, nothing could have
saved Manuel. ‘The poor wretch, vigorously held in front of
Castro, was far too terrified to make a sound. With an immovable
sailor on each side, he scuffled violently, and cowered by starts
as if tied up between two stone posts. His dumb, rapid panting
was in our ears. I shouted:

“Stop, Castro! Stop! . . . Stop him, some of you! He
means to kill the fellow! ”

Nobody heeded my shouting. Castro flung his cloak on the
deck, jumped on it, kicked it aside, all in the same moment as it
seemed, dodged to the right, to the left, drew himself up, and
stepped high, paunchy in his tight smalls and short jacket, making
all the time a low, sibilant sound, which was perfectly blood-
curdling.

“He has a blade on his forearm!” I yelled. ‘‘ He’s armed, I
tell you!”

No one could comprehend my distress. A sailor, raising a lamp,
had a broad smile. Somebody laughed outright. Castro planted
himself before Manuel, nodded menacingly, and stooped ready for
a spring. I was too late in my grab at his collar, but Manuel’s
guardians, acting with precision, put out one arm each to meet his
rush, and he came flying backwards upon me, as though he had re-
bounded from a wall.

He had almost knocked me down, and while I staggered to keep
my feet the air resounded with urgent calls to shoot, to fire, to
bring him down! . . . “ Kill him, sefior! ” came in an entreating
yell from Castro. And I became aware that Manuel had taken
this opportunity to wrench himself free. I heard the hard thud
of his leap. Straight from the hatch (as I was told later by the
marveling sailors) he had alighted with both feet on the rail. I
only saw him already there, sitting on his heels, jabbering and
nodding at us like an enormous baboon. “Shoot, sir! Shoot!”
“Kill! Kill, sefior! As you love your life—kill! ”

Unwittingly, without volition, as if compelled by the suggestion
of the bloodthirsty cries, my hand drew the remaining pistol out

PART FOURTH 241

of my belt. I raised it, and found myself covering the strange
antics of an infuriated ape. He tore at his flanks with both hands
in the idea, I suppose, of stripping for a swim. Rags flew from
him in all directions; an astounding eruption of rags round a
huddled-up figure crouching, wildly active, in front of the muzzle.
I had him. I was sure of my shot. He was only an ape. A dead
ape. But why? Wherefore? To what end? What could it
matter whether he lived or died. He sickened me, and I pitied
him, as I should have pitied an ape.

I lowered my arm an almost imperceptible fraction of a second
before he sprang up and vanished. ‘The sound of the heavy plunge
was followed by a regretful clamor all over the decks, and a gen-
eral rush to the side. “There was nothing to be seen; he had gone
through the layer of fog covering the water. No one heard him
blow or splutter. It was as if a lump of lead had fallen overboard.

Williams wouldn’t have had this happen for a five-pound note.
Sebright expressed the hope that he wouldn’t cheat the gallows
by drowning. ‘The two men who had held him slunk away
abashed. To lower a boat for the purpose of catching him in the
water would have been useless and imprudent.

“His friends can’t be far off yet in the boats,’ growled the
bo’sun; “ and if they don’t pick him up, they would be more than
likely to pick up our chaps.”

Somebody expectorated in so marked a manner that I looked
behind me. Castro had resumed his cloak, and was draping him-
self with deliberate dignity. When this undertaking had been
accomplished, he came up very close to me, and without a word
looked up balefully from the heavy folds thrown across his mouth
and chin under the very tip of his hooked nose.

“T could not do it,” I said. “I could not. It would have
been useless. Too much like murder, Tomas.”

“Oh! the inconstancy, the fancifulness of these English,” he
generalized, with suppressed passion, right into my face. “I don’t
know what’s worse, their fury or their pity. The childishness of
it! The childishness. . . . Do you imagine, sefior, that Manuel
or the Juez O’Brien shall some day spare you in their turn? If I
didn’t know the courage of your nation . . .”

“TI despise the Juez and Manuel alike,” I interrupted angrily.

242 ROMANCE

I despised Castro, too, at that moment, and he paid me back with
interest. There was no mistaking his scathing tone.

‘“‘T know you well. You scorn your friends, as well as your
foes. I have seen so many of you. ‘The blessed saints guard us
from the calamity of your friendship. . . .”

‘No friendship could make an assassin of me, Mr. Castro. . . .”

he . Which is only a very little less calamitous than your
enmity,” he continued, in a cold rage. “A very little less. You
let Manuel go. . . . Manuel! . . . Because of your mercy.

. Mercy! Bah! It is all your pride—your mad pride. You
shall rue it, sefior. Heaven is just. You shall rue it, sefior.”

He denounced me prophetically, wrapped up with an air of
midnight secrecy; but, after all, he had been a friend in the act, if
not in the spirit, and I contented myself by asking, with some pity
for his imbecile craving after murder:

“Why? What can Manuel do to me? He at least is com-
pletely helpless.”

“Did the Sefor Don Juan ever ask himself what Manuel could
do to me—Tomas Castro? ‘To me, who am poor and a vaga-
bond, and a friend of Don Carlos, may his soul rest with God.
Are all you English like princes that you should never think of
anybody but yourselves? ”

He revolted and provoked me, as if his opinion of the English
could matter, or his point of view signify anything against the
authority of my conscience. And it is our conscience that illumines
the romantic side of our life. His point of view was as benighted
and primitive as the point of view of hunger; but, in his fidelity
to the dead architect of my fortunes, he reflected dimly the light
of Carlos’ romance, and I had taken advantage of it, not so much
for the saving of my life as for the guarding of my love. I had
reached that point when love displaces one’s personality, when it
becomes the only ground under our feet, the only sky over our
head, the only light of vision, the first condition of thought—when
we are ready to strive for it, as we fight for the breath of our body.
Brusquely I turned my back on him, and heard the repeated click-
ing of flint against his blade. He lighted a cigarette, and crossed

the deck, to lean cloaked against the bulwark, smoking moodily
under his slouched hat.

CHAPTER V

ANUEL’S escape was the last event of that memorable

night. Nothing more happened, and nothing more

could be done; but there remained much talk and won-
derment to get through. I did all the talking, of course, under
the cuddy lamps. Williams, red and stout, sat staring at me
across the table. His round eyes were perfectly motionless with
astonishment—the story of what had happened in the Casa Riego
was not what he had expected of the small, badly reputed Cuban
town.

Sebright, who had all the duties of the soiled ship and chipped
men to attend to, came in from the deck several times, and would
stand listening for minutes with his fingers playing thoughtfully
about his slight mustache. —The dawn was not very far when he
led me into his own cabin. I was half dead with fatigue, and
troubled by an inward restlessness.

“Turn in into my berth,” said Sebright.

I protested with a stiff tongue, but he gave me a friendly push,
and I tumbled like a log on to the bed-clothes. As soon as my
head felt the pillow the fresh coloring of his face appeared blurred,
and an arm, mistily large, was extended to put out the light of the
lamp screwed to the bulkhead.

“I suppose you know there are warrants out in Jamaica against
you—for that row with the admiral,” he said.

An irresistible and unexpected drowsiness had relaxed all my
limbs.

“ Hang Jamaica!” I said, with difficult animation. “ We are
going home.”

“Hang Jamaica!” he agreed. Then, in the dark, as if coming
after me across the obscure threshold of sleep, his voice meditated,
“T am sorry, though, we are bound for Havana. Pity. Great
pity! Has it occurred to you, Mr. Kemp, that .. .”

It is very possible that he did not finish his sentence; no more

243

244 ROMANCE

penetrated, at least, into my drowsy ear. I awoke slowly from
a trance-like sleep, with a confused notion of having to pick up
the thread of a dropped hint. I went up on deck.

The sun shone, a faint breeze blew, the sea sparkled freshly, and
the wet decks glistened. I stood still, touched by the new glory
of light falling on me; it was a new world—new and familiar,
yet disturbingly beautiful. I seemed to discover all sorts of secret
charms that I had never seen in things I had seen a hundred times.
The watch on deck were busy with brooms and buckets; a sailor,
coiling a rope over a pin, paused in his work to point over the
port-quarter, with a massive fore-arm like a billet of red ma-
hogany.

I looked about, rubbing my eyes. The Lion, close-hauled, was
heading straight away from the coast, which stood out, not very
far yet, outlined heavily and flooded with light. Astern, and to
leeward of us, against a headland of black and indigo, a dazzling
white speck resembled a snowflake fallen upon the blue of the
sea.

““’That’s a schooner,” said the seaman.

They were the first words I heard that morning, and their
friendly hoarseness brushed away whatever of doubt might seem
to mar the inexplicability of my new glow of my happiness. It
was because we were safe—she and I—and because my undis-
turbed love let my heart open to the beauty of the young day
and the joyousness of a splendid sea. I took deep breaths, and my
eyes went all over the ship, embracing, like an affectionate contact,
her elongated shape, the flashing brasses, the tall masts, the gentle
curves of her sails soothed into perfect stillness by the wind. I
felt that she was a shrine, for was not Seraphina sleeping in her,
as safe as a child in its cradle?’ And presently the beauty, the
serenity, the purity, and the splendor of the world would be re-
flected in her clear eyes, and made over to me by her glance.

‘There are times when an austere and just Providence, in its
march along the inscrutable way, brings our hearts to the test of
their own unreason. Which of us has not been tried by irrational
awe, fear, pride, abasement, exultation? And such moments
remain marked by indelible physical impressions, standing out of
the ghostly level of memory like rocks out of the sea, like towers

PART FOURTH 245

ona plain. I had many of these unforgettable emotions—the pro-
found horror of Don Balthasar’s death; the first floating of the
boat, like the opening of wings in space; the first fluttering of the
flames in the fog—many others afterwards, more cruel, more
terrible, with a terror worse than death, in which the very suffering _
was lost; and also this—this moment of elation in the clear morn-
ing, as if the universe had shed its glory upon my feelings as the
sunshine glorifies the sea. I laughed in very lightness of heart, in a
profound sense of success; I laughed, irresponsible and oblivious,
as one laughs in the thrilling delight of a dream.

“Do I look so confoundedly silly?’ asked Sebright, speaking
as though he had a heavy cold. “I am stupid—tired. Ive been
on my feet this twenty-four hours—about the liveliest in my life,
too. You haven’t slept very long either—none of us have. I’m
sure I hope your young lady has rested.”

He put his hands in his pockets. He might have been very
tired, but I had never seen a boy fresh out of bed with a rosier
face. The black pin-points of his pupils seemed to bore through
distance, exploring the horizon beyond my shoulder. The man
called Mike, the one I had had the tussle with overnight, came up
behind the indefatigable mate, and shyly offered me my pistol.
His head was bound over the top, and under the chin, as if for
toothache, and his bronzed, rough-hewn face looked out astonish-
ingly through the snowy whiteness of the linen. Only a few hours
before, we had been doing our best to kill each other. In my
cordial glow, I bantered him light-heartedly about his ferocity and
his strength.

He stood before me, patiently rubbing the brown instep of one
thick foot with the horny sole of the other.

“You paid me off for that bit, sir,” he said bashfully. “It
was in the way of duty.”

“T’m uncommon glad you didn’t squeeze the ghost out of me.”
I said; “a morning like this is enough to make you glad you can
breathe.”

To this day I remember the beauty of that rugged, grizzled,
hairy seaman’s eyelashes. “They were long and thick, shotowing
the eyes softly like the lashes of a young girl.

““[’m sure, sir, we wish you luck—to you and the young lady—

246 ROMANCE

all of us,” he said shamefacedly ; and his bass, half-concealed mutter
was quite as sweet to my ears as a celestial melody; it was, after
all, the sanction of simple earnestness to my desires and hopes—
a witness that he and his like were on my side in the world of
~ Romance.

“Well, go forward now, Mike,” Sebright said, as I took the
pistol.

“Tt’s a blessing to talk to one’s own people,” I said, expan-
sively, to him. ‘ He’s a fine fellow.” I stuck the pistol in my
belt. ‘I trust I shall never need to use barrel or butt again, as
long as I live.”

“A very sensible wish,” Sebright answered, with a sort of re-
serve of meaning in his tone; “especially as on board here we
couldn’t find you a single pinch of powder for a priming. Do you
notice the consort we have this morning?”

“What do I want with powder?” I asked. “Do you mean
that?” I pointed to the white sail of the schooner. Sebright,
looking hard at me, nodded several times.

“We sighted her as soon as day broke. D’you know what she
means?”

I said I supposed she was a coaster.

“Tt means, most likely, that the fellow with the curls that made
me think of my maiden aunt, has managed to keep his horse-face
above water.” He meant Manuel-del-Popolo. ‘‘ What mischief
he may do yet before he runs his head into a noose, it’s hard to
say. ‘The old Spaniard you brought with you thinks he has already
been busy—for no good, you may be sure.”

“You mean that’s one of the Rio schooners?” I asked
quickly.

That, with all its consequent troubles for me, was what he did
mean. He said I might take his word for it that, with the winds
we had had, no craft working along the coast could be just there
now unless she came out of Rio Medio. There was a calm almost
up to sunrise, and it looked as if they had towed her out with
boats before daylight. . . . “Seems a rather unlikely bit of
exertion for the lazy brutes; but if they are as much afraid of that

confounded Trishman as you say ee are, that would account for
their energy.”

PART FOURTH 247

They would steal and do murder simply for the love of God,
_ but it would take the fear of a devil to make them do a bit of
honest work—and pulling an oar was honest work, no matter why
it was done. This was the combined wisdom of Sebright and of
Tomas Castro, with whom he had been in consultation. As to
the fear of the devil, O’Brien was very much like a devil, an
efficient substitute. And there was certainly somebody or some-
thing to make them bestir themselves like this. . . .

Before my mind arose a scene: Manuel, the night before, pulled
out of the water into a boat—raging, half-drowned, eloquent, in-
spired. ‘The contemptible beast was inspired, as a politician is, a
demagogue. He could sway his fellows, as I had heard enough
to know. And I felt a slight chill on the warmth of my hope, be-
cause that bright sail, brilliantly and furtively dodging along in
our wake, must be the product of Manuel’s inspiration, urged to
perseverance by the fear of O’Brien. pie mate continued, staring
knowingly at it:

“You know I am putting two and two together, like the old

maids that come to see my aunt when they want to take away a
woman’s character. The Dagos are out, and no mistake. ‘The
question is, Why? You must know whether those schooners can
sail anything; but don’t forget the old Lion is pretty smart. Is it
likely they'll attempt the ship again? ”

I negatived that at once. I explained to Sebright that the store
of ammunition in Rio Medio would not run to it; that the
Lugarefios were cowardly, divided by faction, incapable, by them-
selves, of combining for any length of time, and still less of fol-
lowing a plan requiring perseverance and hardihood.

“They can’t mean anything in the nature of open attack,” I
affirmed. ‘‘ They may have attempted something of the sort in
Nichols’ time, but it isn’t in their nature.”

Sebright said that was practically Castro’s opinion, too—except
that Castro had emphasized his remarks by spitting all the time,
“like an old tomcat. He seems a very spiteful man, with no great
love for you, Mr. Kemp. Do you think it safe to have him about
you? What are all these grievances of his?”

Castro seemed to have spouted his bile like a volcano, and had
rather confused Sebright. He had said much about being a friend

248 ROMANCE

of the Spanish lord—Carlos; and that now he had no place on
earth to hide his head.

‘As far as I could make out, he’s wanted in England,” said
Sebright, “‘ for some matter of a stolen watch, years ago in Liver-
pool, I think. And your cousin, the grandee, was mixed up in
that, too. That sounds funny; you didn’t tell us about that.
Damme if he didn’t seem to imply that you, too. . . . But you
have never been in Liverpool. Of course not. . . .”

But that had not been precisely Castro’s point. He had affirmed
he had enemies in Spain; he shuddered at the idea of going to
France, and now my English fancifulness had made it impossible
for him to live in Rio Medio, where he had had the care of a
good padrona.

“I suppose he means a landlady,” Sebright chuckled. ‘‘ Old
but good, he says. He expected to die there in peace, a good
Christian. And what’s that about the priests getting hold of his
very last bit of silver? I must say that sounded truest of all his
rigmarole. For the salvation of his soul, I suppose?”

““No, my cousin’s soul,” I said gloomily.

“ Humbugs. I only understood one word in three.”

Just then Tomas himself stalked into sight among the men
forward. Coming round the corner of the deck-house, he stopped
at the galley door like a crow outside a hut, waiting. We
watched him getting a light for his cigarette at the galley door
with much dignified pantomime. ‘The negro cook of the Lion,
holding out to him in the doorway a live coal in a pair of tongs,
turned his Ethiopian face and white ivories towards a group of
sailors lost in the contemplation of the proceedings. And, when
Castro had passed them, spurting jets of smoke, they swung about
to look after his short figure, upon whose draped blackness the
sunlight brought out reddish streaks as if bucketfuls of rusty water
had been thrown over him from hat to toe. The end of his broken
plume hung forward aggressively.

“ Look how the fellow struts! Night and thunder! Hey, Don
Tenebroso! Would your worship hasten thither. . . .” Se-
bright hailed jocularly.

Castro, without altering his pace, came up to us.

“What do you think of her now?” asked Sebright, pointing to

PART FOURTH 249

the strange sail. ‘‘She’s grown a bit plainer, now she is out of
the glare.”

Castro, wrapping his chin, stood still, face to the sea. After a
long while:

“ Malediction,” he pronounced slowly, and without moving his
head shot a sidelong glance at me.

“Tt’s clear enough how he feels about our friends over there.
Malediction. Just so. Very proper. But it seems as though he had
a bone to pick with all the world,” drawled Sebright, a little
sleepily. ‘Then, resuming his briskness, he bantered, ‘‘ So you don’t
want to go to England, Mr. Castro? No friends there? Sus. per
col., and that sort of thing?”

Castro, contemptuous, staring straight away, nodded impa-
tiently.

“ But this gentleman you are so devoted to is going to England
—to his friends.”

Castro’s arms shook under the mantle falling all round
_ him straight from the neck. His whole body seemed convulsed.
From his puckered dark lips issued a fiendish and derisive
squeal.

“Let his friends beware, then. Por Dios! Let them beware.
Let them pray and fast, and beg the intercession of the saints.
fat hal hal...”

Nothing could have been more unlike his saturnine self-centered
truculence of restraint. He impressed me; and even Sebright’s
steady, cool eyes grew perceptibly larger before this sarcastic fury.
Castro choked; the rusty, black folds encircling him shook and
heaved. Unexpectedly he thrust out in front of the cloak one yel-
low, dirty little hand, side by side with the bright end of his fixed
blade.

“What do I hear? To England! Going to England! Ha!
Then let him hasten there straight! Let him go straight there, I
say—I, Tomas Castro! ”

He lowered his tone to impress us more, and the point of the
knife, as it were an emphatic forefinger, tapped the open palm
forcibly. Did we think that a man was not already riding along
the coast to Havana on a fast mule ?—the very best mule from the
stables of Don Balthasar himself—that murdered saint. ‘The

250 ROMANCE

Captain-General had no such mules. His late excellency owned a
sugar estate halfway between Rio Medio and Havana, and a relay
of riding mules was kept there for quickness when his excellency
of holy memory found occasion to write his commands to the
capital. The news of our escape would reach the Juez next day
at the latest. Manuel would take care of that—unless he were
drowned. But he could swim like a fish. Malediction!

“I cried out to you to kill!’ he addressed me directly; “ with
all my soul I cried. And why? Because he had seen you and the
sefiorita, too, alas! He should have been made dumb—made
dumb with your pistol, sefior, since those two stupid English mari-
ners were too much for an old man like me. Manuel should have
been made dumb—dumb forever, I say. What mattered he—that
gutter-born offspring of an evil Gitana, whom I have seen, sefior!
I, myself, have seen her in the days of my adversity in Madrid,
sefior—a red flower behind the ear, clad in rags that did not cover
all her naked skin, looking on while they fought for her with
knives in a wine-shop full of beggars and thieves. Si, sefior.
That’s his mother. Improvisador—politico—capataz. Ha... .
Dirt!”

He made a gesture of immense contempt.

“What mattered he? ‘The coach would have returned from
the cathedral, and the Casa Riego could have been held for days
—and who could have known you were not inside. I had con-
versed earnestly with Cesar the major-domo—an African, it is
true, but a man of much character and excellent sagacity. Ah,
Manuel! Manuel! If I But the devil himself fathers the
children of such mothers. I am no longer in possession of my first
vigor, and you, sefior, have all the folly of your nation . . .”

He bared his grizzled head to me loftily.

“|. . And the courage! Doubtless, that is certain. It is
well. You may want it all before long, sefior . . . And the
courage!”

The broken plume swept the deck. For a time he blinked his
creased, brown eyelids in the sun, then pulled his hat low down
over his brows, and, wrapping himself up closely, turned away
from me to look at the sail to leeward.

“What an old, old, wrinkled, little, puffy beggar he is!” ob-

—

PART FOURTH 251

served Sebright, in an undertone. . . . “‘ Well, and what is your
worship’s opinion as to the purpose of that schooner?”

Castro shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘ Who knows?” . .. He re-
leased the gathered folds of his cloak, and moved off without a
look at either of us.

“There he struts, with his wings drooping like a turkey-cock
gone into deep mourning,” said Sebright. ‘‘ Who knows? Ah,
well, there’s no hurry to know for a day or two. I don’t think
that craft could overhaul the Lion, if they tried ever so. They
may manage toekeep us in sight perhaps.”

He yawned, and left me standing motionless, thinking of Sera-
phina. I longed to see her—to make sure, as if my belief in the
possession of her had been inexplicably weakened. I was going to
look at the door of her cabin. But when I got as far as the com-
panion I had to stand aside for Mrs. Williams, who was coming
up the winding stairs. ;

From above I saw the gray woolen shawl thrown over her
narrow shoulders. Her parting made a broad line on her brown
head. She mounted busily, holding up a little the front of her
black, plain skirt. Her glance met mine with a pale, searching
candor from below.

Overnight she had heard all my story. She had come out to
the saloon whilst I had been giving it to Williams, and after saying
reassuringly, ‘‘ The young lady, I am thankful, is asleep,” she had
sat with her eyes fixed upon my lips. I had been aware of her
anxious face, and of the slight, nervous movements of her hands
at certain portions of my narrative under the blazing lamps. We
met now, for the first time, in the daylight.

Hastily, as if barring my road to Seraphina’s cabin, “ Miss
Riego, I would have you know,” she said, “is in good bodily
health. I have this moment looked upon her again. The poor,
superstitious young lady is on her knees, crossing herself.”

Mrs. Williams shuddered slightly. It was plain that the sight
of that popish practice had given her a shock—almost a scare, as
if she had seen a secret and nefarious rite. I explained that Sera-
phina, being a Catholic, worshiped as her lights enjoined, as we
did after ours. Mrs. Williams only sighed at this, and, making
an effort, proposed that I should walk with her a little. We began

252 ROMANCE

to pace the poop, she gliding with short steps at my side, and draw-
ing close the skimpy shawl about her. The smooth bands of her
hair put a shadow into the slight hollows of her temples. No
nun, in the chilly meekness of the habit, had ever given me such
a strong impression of poverty and renunciation.

But there was in that faded woman a warmth of sentiment.
She flushed delicately whenever caught (and one could not help
catching her continually) following her husband with eyes that had
an expression of maternal uneasiness and the captivated attention
of a bride. And after she had got over the idea that I, as a mem-
ber of the male British aristocracy, was dissolute—it was an article
of faith with her—that warmth of sentiment would bring a faint,
sympathetic rosiness to her sunken cheeks.

She said suddenly and tremblingly, “‘ Oh, young sir, reflect upon
these things before it is too late. You young men, in your luxuri-
ous, worldly, ungoverned lives . . .”

I shall never forget that first talk with her on the poop—her
hurried, nervous voice (for she was a timid woman, speaking from
a sense of duty), and the extravagant forms her ignorance took.
With the emotions of the past night still throbbing in my brain and
heart, with the sight of the sea and the coast, with the Rio Medio
schooner hanging on our quarter, I listened to her, and had a hard
task to believe my ears. She was so convinced that I was “ dissi-
lute,” because of my class—as an earl’s grandson.

It is dificult to imagine how she arrived at the conviction; it
must have been from pulpit denunciations of the small Bethel on
the outskirt of Bristol. Her uncle, J. Perkins, was a great rufhan,
certainly, and Williams was dissolute enough, if one wished to
call his festive imbecilities by a hard name. But these two
could, by no means, be said to belong to the upper classes. And
these two, apart from her favorite preacher, were the only two
men of whom she could be said to have more than a visual knowl-
edge.

She had spent her best years in domestic slavery to her bachelor
uncle, an old shipowner of savage selfishness; she had been the
deplorable mistress of his big, half-furnished house, standing in a
damp garden full of trees. The outrageous Perkins had been a
sailor in his time—mate of a privateer in the great French war,

a

PART FOURTH 253

afterwards master of a slaver, developing at last into the owner of
a small fleet of West Indiamen. Williams was his favorite cap-
tain, whom he would bring home in the evening to drink rum and
water, and smoke churchwarden pipes with him. ‘The niece had
to sit up, too, at these dismal revels. Old Perkins would keep her
out of bed to mix the grogs, till he was ready to climb the bare
stone staircase, echoing from top to bottom with his stumbles.
However, it seems he dozed a good deal in snatches during the
evening, and this, I suppose, gave their opportunity to the pale,
spiritual-looking spinster with the patient eyes, and to the thick,
staring Williams, florid with good living, and utterly unused to
the company of women of that sort. But in what way these two
unsimilar beings had looked upon each other, what she saw in him,
what he imagined her to be like, why, how, wherefore, an under-
standing arose between them, remains inexplicable. It was her
romance—and it is even possible that he was moved by an unselfish
sentiment. Sebright accounted for the matter by saying that, as
to the woman, it was no wonder. Anything to get away from
a bullying old ruffian, that would use bad language in cold blood
just to horrify her—and then burst into a laugh and jeer; but as
to Captain Williams (Sebright had been with him from a boy),
he ought to have known he was quite incapable of keeping straight
after all these free-and-easy years.

He used to talk a lot, about that time, of good women, of
settling down to a respectable home, of leading a better life; but,
of course, he couldn’t. Simply couldn’t, what with old friends in
Kingston and Havana—and his habits formed—and his weakness
for women who, as Sebright put it, could not be called good.
Certainly there did not seem to have been any sordid calculation
in the marriage. Williams fully expected to lose his command;
but, as it turned out, the old beast, Perkins, was quite daunted by
the loss of his niece. He found them out in their lodgings, came
to them crying—absolutely whimpering about his white hairs,
talking touchingly of his will, and promising amendment. In the
end it was arranged that Williams should keep his command; and
Mrs. Williams went back to her uncle. “That was the best of
it. Actually went back to look after that lonely old rip, out of
pure pitv and goodness of heart. Of course old Perkins was afraid

254 ROMANCE

to treat her as badly as before, and everything was going on fairly
well, till some kind friend sent her an anonymous letter about
Williams’ goings on in Jamaica. Sebright strongly suspected the
master of another regular trading ship, with whom Williams had
a difference in Kingston the voyage before last—Sebright said—
about a small matter, with long hair—not worth talking about.
She said nothing at first, and nearly worried herself into a brain-
fever. Then she confessed she had a letter—didn’t believe it—
but wanted a change, and would like to come for one voyage.
Nothing could be said to that.

The worst was, the captain was so knocked over at the idea of
his little sins coming to light, that he—Sebright—had the greatest
difficulty in preventing him from giving himself away.

“Tf I hadn’t been really fond of her,’ Sebright concluded, “ I
would have let everything go by the board. It’s too difficult. And
mind, the whole of Kingston was on the broad grin all the time we
were there—but it’s no joke. She’s a good woman, and she’s jeal-
ous. She wants to keep her own. Never had much of her own
in this world, poor thing. She can’t help herself any more than
the skipper can. Luckily, she knows no more of life than a baby.
But it’s a most cruel set out.”

Sebright had exposed the domestic situation on board the Lion
with a force of insight and sympathy hardly to be expected from
his years. No doubt his attachment to the disparate couple counted
for not a little. He seemed to feel for them both a sort of exas-
perated affection; but I have no doubt that in his way he was a
remarkable young man with his contrasted bringing up first at
the hands of an old maiden lady; afterwards on board ship with
Williams, to whom he was indentured at the age of fifteen, when
as he casually mentioned—“ a scoundrelly attorney in Exeter had
run off with most of the old girl’s money.” Indeed, looking back,
they all appear to me uncommon; even to the round-eyed Williams,
cowed simply out of respect and regard for his wife, and as if
dazed with fright at the conventional catastrophe of being found
out before he could get her safely back to Bristol. As to Mrs.
Williams, I must confess that the poor woman’s ridiculous and
genuine misery, inducing her to undertake the voyage, presented
itself to me simply as a blessing, there on the poop. She had been

PART FOURTH 255

practically good to Seraphina, and her talking to me mattered very
little, set against that. . . . And such talk!

It was like listening to an earnest, impassioned, tremulous im-
pertinence. She seemed to start from the assumption that I was
capable of every villainy, and devoid of honor and conscience; only,
one perceived that she used the words from the force of unworldly
conviction, and without any real knowledge of their meaning, as
a precocious child uses terms borrowed from its pastors and
masters.

I was greatly disconcerted at first, but I was never angry.
What of it, if, with a sort of sweet absurdity, she talked in great
agitation of the depravity of hearts, of the sin of light-mindedness,
of the self-deception which leads men astray—a confused but pur-
poseful jumble, in which occasional allusions to the errors of Rome,
and to the want of seriousness in the upper classes, put in a last
touch of extravagance?

What of it? The time was coming when I should remember
the frail, homely, as if starved, woman, and thank heaven for her
generous heart, which was gained for us from that moment. Far
from being offended, I was drawn to her. ‘There is a beauty
in the absolute conscience of the simple; and besides, her distrust
was for me, alone. I saw that she erected herself not into a judge,
but into a guardian, against the dangers of our youth and our
romance. She was disturbed by its origin.

There was so much of the unusual, of the unheard of in its be-
‘ginning, that she was afraid of the end. I was so inexperienced,
she said, and so was the young lady—poor motherless thing—
willful, no doubt—so very taking—like a little child, rather. Had
I comprehended all my responsibility? (And here one of the
hurried side-allusions to the errors of Rome came in with a re-
minder, touching the charge of another immortal soul beside my
own.) Had I reflected? .. .

It seems to me that this moment was the last of my boyishness.
It was as if the contact with her earnestness had matured me with
a power greater than the power of dangers, of fear, of tragic
events. She wanted to know insistently whether I were sure of
myself, whether I had examined my feelings, and had measured my
strength, and had asked for guidance. I had done nothing of this.

256 ROMANCE

Not till brought face to face with her unanswerable simplicity did
I descend within myself. It seemed I had descended so deeply
that, for a time, I lost the sound of her voice. And again I heard
her.

“There’s time yet,” she was saying. “ Think, young sir [she
had addressed me throughout as “ young sir”’].. My husband and
I have been talking it over most anxiously. ‘Think well before you
commit the young lady for life. You are both so young. It looks
as if we had been sent providentially. . . .”

What was she driving at? Did she doubt my love? It was
rather horrible; but it was too startling and too extravagant to be
met with anger. We looked at each other, and I discovered that
she had been, in reality, tremendously excited by this adventure.
This was the secret of her audacity. And I was also possessed by
excitement. We stood there like two persons meeting in a great
wind. Without moving her hands, she clasped and unclasped her
fingers, looking up at me with soliciting eyes; and her lips, firmly
closed, twitched.

“T am looking for the means of explaining to you how much I
love her,” I burst out. “And if I found a way, you could not
understand. What do you know ?—what can you know? .. .”

I said this not in scorn, but in sheer helplessness. I was at a
loss before the august magnitude of my feeling, which I saw con-
fronting me like an enormous presence arising from that blue sea.
It was no longer a boy-and-girl affair; no longer an adventure; it
was an immense and serious happiness, to be paid for by an infinity
of sacrifice.

“I am a woman,” she said, with a fluttering dignity. ‘“ And it
is because I know how women suffer from what men say. . . .”

Her face flushed. It flushed to the very bands of her hair. She
was rosy all over the eyes and forehead. Rosy and ascetic, with
something outraged and inexpressibly sweet in her expression. My
great emotion was between us like a mist, through which I beheld
strange appearances. It was as if an immaterial spirit had blushed
before me. And suddenly I saw tears—tears that glittered ex-
ceedingly, falling hard and round, like pellets of glass, out of her
faded eyes.

“Mrs. Williams,” I cried, “ you can’t know how I love her.

i

ee

PART FOURTH 257

No one in the world can know. When I think of her—and I
think of her always—it seems to me that one life is not enough to
show my devotion. I love her like something unchangeable and
unique—altogether out of the world; because I see the world
through her. I would still love her if she had made me miserable
and unhappy.”

She exclaimed a low “ Ah!” and turned her head away for a
moment.

“But one cannot express these things,” I continued. ‘“ There
are no words. Words are not meant for that. I love her so that,
were I to die this moment, I verily believe my soul, refusing to
leave this earth, would remain hovering near her. . . .”

She interrupted me with a sort of indulgent horror. “Sh! sh!”
I mustn’t talk like that. I really must not—and inconsequently
she declared she was quite willing to believe me. Her husband
and herself had not slept a wink for thinking of us. The notion
of the fat, sleepy Williams, sitting up all night to consider,
owlishly, the durability of my love, cooled my excitement. She
thought they had been providentially thrown into our way to give
us an opportunity of reconsidering our decision. There were still
so many difficulties in the way.

I did not see any; her utter incomprehension began to weary me,
while she still twined her fingers, wiped her eyes by stealth, as it
were, and talked unflinchingly. She could not have made herself
clearly understood by Seraphina. Moreover, women were so help-
less—so very helpless in such matters. “That is why she was speak-
ing to me. She did not doubt my sincerity at the present time—
but there was, humanly speaking, a long life before us—and what
of afterwards? Was I sure of myself—later on—when all was
well?

I cut her short. Seizing both her hands:

“TI accept the omen, Mrs. Williams!” I cried. ‘“ That’s it!
When all is well! And all must be well in a very short time, with
you and your husband’s help, which shall not fail me, I know.
I feel as if the worst of our troubles were over already. . . .”

But at that moment I saw Seraphina coming out on deck. She
emerged from the companion, bare-headed, and looked about at
her new surroundings with that air of imperious and childlike

258 ROMANCE

beauty which made her charm. The wind stirred slightly her
delicate hair, and I looked at her; I looked at her stilled, as one
watches the dawn or listens to a sweet strain of music caught
from afar. Suddenly dropping Mrs. Williams’ hand, I ran to
Neti. sons

When I turned round, Williams had joined his wife, and she
had slipped her arm under his. Her hand, thin and white, looked
like the hand of an invalid on the brawny forearm of that man
bursting with health and good condition. By the side of his lusti-
ness, she was almost ethereal—and yet I seemed to see in them
something they had in common—something subtle, like the expres-
sion of eyes. It was the expression of their eyes. “They looked at
us with commiseration; one of them sweetly, the other with his
owlish fixity. As we two, Seraphina and I, approached them to-
gether, I heard Williams’ thick, sleepy voice asking, “ And so he
says he won’t?”” ‘To which his wife, raising her tone with a shade
of indignation, answered, “‘ Of course not.” No, I was not mis-
taken. In their dissimilar persons, eyes, faces, there was expressed
a common trouble, doubt, and commiseration. “This expression
seemed to go out to meet us sadly, like a bearer of ill-news. And,
as if at the sight of a downcast messenger, I experienced the clear
presentiment of some fatal intelligence.

It was conveyed to me late in the afternoon of that same day
out of Williams’ own thick lips, that seemed as heavy and inert
as his voice.

“As far as we can see,” he said, “ you can’t stay in the ship,
Kemp. It would do no one any good—not the slightest good. Ask
Sebright here.”

It was a sort of council of war, to which we had been summoned
in the saloon. Mrs. Williams had some sewing in her lap. She
listened, her hands motionless, her eyes full of desolation. Sera-
phina’s attitude, leaning her cheek on her hand, reminded me of the
time when I had seen her absorbed in watching the green-and-gold
lizard in the back room of Ramon’s store, with her hair falling
about her face like a veil. Castro was not called in till later on.
But Sebright was there, leaning his back negligently against the
bulkhead behind Williams, and looking down on us seated on both
sides of the long table. And there was present, too, in all our

PART FOURTH 259

minds, the image of the Rio Medio schooner, hull down on our
quarter. In all the trials of sailing, we had not been able to shake
her off that day.

“T don’t want to hide from you, Mr. Kemp,” Sebright began,
“that it was I who pointed out to the captain that you would be
only getting the ship in trouble for nothing. She’s an old trader
and favorite with shippers; and if we once get to loggerheads with
the powers, there’s an end of her trading. As to missing Havana
this trip, even if you, Mr. Kemp, could give a pot of money, the
captain could never show his nose in there again after breaking his
charter-party to help steal a young lady. And it isn’t as if she were
nobody. She’s the richest heiress in the island. ‘The biggest people
in Spain would have their say in this matter. I suppose they could
put the captain in prison or something. Anyway, good-by to the
Havana business for good. Why, old Perkins would have a fit.
He got over one runaway match. . . . All right, Mrs. Williams,
not another word. . . . What I meant to say is that this is
nothing else but a love story, and to knock on the head a valuable
old-established connection for it. . . . Don’t bite your lip, Mr.
Kemp. I mean no disrespect to your feelings. Perkins would
start up to break things—let alone his heart. I am sure the captain
and Mrs. Williams think so, too.”

The festive and subdued captain of the Lion was staring straight
before him, as if stuffed. Mrs. Williams moved her fingers, com-
pressed her lips, and looked helplessly at all of us in turn. “ Be-
sides altering his will,’ Sebright breathed confidentially at the
back of my head. I perceived that this old Perkins, whom I had
never seen, and was never to see in the body, whose body no
one was ever to see any more (he died suddenly on the echoing
staircase, with a flat candlestick in his hand; was already dead at
the time, so that Mrs. Williams was actually sitting in the cabin
of her very own ship)—I perceived that old Perkins was present
at this discussion with all the power of a malignant, bad-tempered
spirit. Those two were afraid of him. They had defied him once,
it is true—but even that had been done out of fear, as it were.

Dismayed, I spoke quickly to Seraphina. With her head resting
on her hand, and her eyes following the aimless tracings of her
finger on the table, she said:

260 ROMANCE

“Tt shall be as God wills it, Juan.”

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t!” said Sebright, coughing be-
hind me. He understood Spanish fairly well. “What I’ve
said in perfectly true. Nevertheless the captain was ready to
risk it.”

“ Yes,” ejaculated Williams profoundly, out of almost still lips,
and otherwise so motionless all over that the deep sound seemed
to have been produced by some person under the table. Mrs.
Williams’ fingers were clasped on her lap, and her eyes seemed to
beg for belief all round our faces.

“ But the point is that it would have been no earthly good for
you two,” continued Sebright. “That’s the point I made. If
O’Brien knows anything, he knows you are on board this ship. He
reckons on it as a dead certainty. Now, it is very evident that we
could refuse to give you up, Mr. Kemp, and that the admiral (if
the flagship’s off Havana, as I think she must be by now) would
have to back us up. How you would get on afterwards with old
Groggy Rowley, I don’t know. It isn’t likely he has forgotten
you tried to wipe the floor with him, if I am to take the captain’s
yarn as correct.”

“ A regular hero,” Williams testified suddenly, in his concealed,
from-under-the-table tone. ‘‘ He’s not afraid of any of them; not
he. Ha! ha! Old Topnambo must have . . .” He glanced at
his wife, and bit his tongue—perhaps at the recollection of his un-
safe conjugal position—ending in disjointed words, “ In his chaise
—warrant—separationist—rebel,” and all this without moving a
limb or a muscle of his face, till, with a low, throaty chuckle, he
fluttered a stony sort of wink to my address.

Sebright had paused only long enough for this ebullition to be
over. The cool logic of his surmise appalled me. He didn’t see
why O’Brien or anybody in Havana should want to interfere with
me personally. But if I wanted to keep my young lady, it was
obvious she must not arrive in Havana on board a ship where they
would be sure to look for her the very first thing. It was even
worse than it looked, he declared. His firm conviction was that
if the Lion did not turn up in Havana pretty soon, there would
be a Spanish man-of-war sent out to look for her—or else Mr.
O’Brien was not the man we took him for, There was lying in

PART FOURTH 261

harbor a corvette called the 7'ornado, a very likely looking craft.
I didn’t expect them to fight a corvette. No doubt there would be
a fuss made about stopping a British ship on the high seas; but
that would be a cold comfort after the lady had been taken away
from me. She was a person of so much importance that even
our own admiral could be induced—say, by the Captain-General’s
remonstrances—to sanction such an action. ‘There was no saying
what Rowley would do if they only promised to present him with
half a dozen pirates to take home for a hanging. Why! that was
the very identical thing the flagship was kept dodging off Havana
for! And O’Brien knew where to lay his hands on a gross of
such birds, for that matter.

“No,” concluded Sebright, overwhelming me from behind, as
I sat looking, not at the uncertainties of the future, but at the
paralyzing hopelessness of the bare to-morrow. ‘‘ The Lion is no
place for you, whether she goes into Havana or not. Moreover,
into Havana she must go now. ‘There’s no help for it. It’s the
deuce of a situation.” ,

“ Very well,” I gasped. I tried to be resolute. I felt, suddenly,
as if all the air in the cabin had gone up the open skylight. I
couldn’t remain below another moment; and, muttering something
about coming back directly, I jumped up and ran out without
looking at anyone lest I should give myself away. I ran out on
deck for air, but the great blue emptiness of the open staggered me
like a blow over the heart. I walked slowly to the side, and,
planting both my elbows on the rail, stared abroad defiantly and
without a single clear thought in my head. I had a vague feeling
that the descent of the sun towards the waters, going on before my
eyes with changes of light and cloud, -was like some gorgeous and
empty ceremonial of immersion belonging to a vast barren faith
remote from consolation and hope. And I noticed, also, small
things without importance—the hirsute aspect of a sailor; the
end of a rope trailing overboard; and Castro, so different from
everybody else on board that his appearance seemed to create a
profound solitude round him, lounging before the cabin door as if
engaged in a deep conspiracy all by himself. I heard voices talking
loudly behind me, too. I noted them distinctly, but with perfect
indifference. A long time after, with the same indifference, I

262 ROMANCE

looked over my shoulder. Castro had vanished from the quarter-
deck. And I’ turned my face to the sea again as a man, feeling
himself beaten in a fight with death, might turn his face to the
wall.

I had fought a harder battle with a more cruel foe than death,
with the doubt of myself; an endless contest, in which there is no
peace of victory or of defeat. ‘The open sea was like a blank and
unscalable wall imprisoning the eternal question of conduct.
Kight or wrong? Generosity or folly? Conscience or only weak
fear before remorse? The magnificent ritual of sunset went on
palpitating with an inaudible rhythm, with slow and unerring
observance, went on to the end, leaving its funeral fires on the
sky and a great shadow upon the sea. “Twice I had honorably
stayed my hand. Twice . . . to this end.

In a moment, I went through all the agonies of suicide, which
left me alive, alas, to burn with the shame of the treasonable
thought, and terrified by the revolt of my soul refusing to leave
the world in which a young girl lived! The vast twilight seemed
to take the impress of her image like wax. What did Seraphina
think of me? I knew nothing of her but her features, and it was
enough. Strange, this power of a woman’s face upon a man’s
heart—this mastery, potent as witchcraft and mysterious like a
miracle. I should have to go and tell her. I did not suppose she
could have understood all of Sebright’s argumentation. ‘Therefore,
it was for me to explain to what a pretty pass I had brought our
love.

I was so greatly disinclined to stir that I let Sebright’s voice
go on calling my name half a dozen times from the cabin door.
At last I faced about.

“Mr. Kemp! I say, Kemp! Aren’t you coming in yet?”

“To say good-by,” I said, approaching him.

It had fallen dark already.

“Good-by? No. The carpenter must have a day at least.”

Carpenter! What had a carpenter to do in this? However,
nothing mattered—as though I had managed to spoil the whole
scheme of creation.

i: You didn’t think of making a start to-night, did you?” Se-
bright wondered. “ Where would be the sense of it?”

PART FOURTH 263

“Sense,” I answered contemptuously. ‘There is no sense in
anything. ‘There is necessity. Necessity.”

He remained silent for a time, peering at me.

“ Necessity, to be sure,” he said slowly. ‘‘ And I don’t see why
you should be angry at it.”

I was thinking that it was easy enough for him to keep cool—
the necessity being mine. He continued to philosophize with what
seemed to me a shocking freedom of mind.

“ Must try to put some sense into it. That’s what we are here
for, I guess. Anyhow, there’s some room for sense in arranging
the way a thing is to be done, be it as hard as it may. And I don’t
see any sense, either, in exposing a woman to more hardship than is
absolutely necessary. We have talked it out now, and I can do
no more. Do go inside for a bit. Mrs. Williams is worrying the
sefiorita, rather, I’m afraid.”

I paused a moment to try and regain the command of my facul-
ties. But it was as if a bombshell had exploded inside my
skull, scattering all my wits to the four winds of heaven. Only
the conviction of failure remained, attended by a_ profound
distress.

I fancy, though, I presented a fairly bold front. The lamp was
lit, and small changes had occurred during my absence. Williams
had turned his bulk sideways to the table. Mrs. Williams had
risen from her place, and was now sitting upright close to Sera-
phina, holding one little hand inclosed caressingly between her
frail palms, as if she had there something alive that needed cher-
ishing. And in that position she looked up at me with a strange
air of worn-out youth, cast by a rosy flush over her forehead and
face. Seraphina still leaned her head on her other hand, and I
noted, through the soft shadow of falling hair, the heightened
color on her cheek and the augmented brilliance of her eye.

“ How I wish she had been an English girl,” Mrs. Williams
sighed regretfully, and leaned forward to look into Seraphina’s
half-averted face.

“My dear, did you quite, quite understand what I have been
saying to you?”

She waited.

“ Si, Sefiora,” said Seraphina. None of us moved. Then, after

264 ROMANCE

a time, turning to me with sudden animation, ‘“‘ This woman asked
me if I believed in your love,” she cried. “ She is old. Oh, Juan,
can the years change the heart? your heart?” Her voice dropped.
“ How am I to know that?” she,went on piteously. “I am young
—and we may not live so long. I believe in mine. . . .”

The corners of her delicate lips drooped; but she mastered her
desire to cry, and steadied her voice which, always rich and full
of womanly charm, took on, when she was deeply moved, an im-
posing gravity of timbre.

“ But I am a Spaniard, and I believe in my lover’s honor; in
your—your English honor, Juan.”

With the dignity of a supreme confidence she extended her hand.
It was one of the culminating moments of our love. For love is
like a journey in mountainous country, up through the clouds, and
down into the shadows to an unknown destination. It was a
moment rapt and full of feeling, in which we seemed to dwell
together high up and alone—till she withdrew her hand from my
lips, and I found myself back in the cabin, as if precipitated from
a lofty place.

Nobody was looking at us. Mrs. Williams sat with downcast
eyelids, with her hands reposing on her lap: her husband gazed
discreetly at a gold mounting on the deck-beam; and the upward
cast of his eyes invested his red face with an air of singularly im-
becile ecstasy. And there was Castro, too, whom I had not seen
till then, though I must have brushed against him on entering.
He had stood by the door a mute, and, as it were, a voluntarily
unmasked conspirator with the black round of the hat lying in
front of his feet. He, alone, looked at us. He looked from Sera-
phina to me—from me to Seraphina. He looked unutterable
things, rolling his crow-footed eyes in pious horror and glowering
in turns. When Seraphina addressed him, he hastened to
incline his head with his usual deference for the daughter of the
Riegos.

She said, “There are things that concern this Caballero, and
that you can never understand. Your fidelity is proved. It has
sunk deep here. . . . It shall give you a contented old age--on
the word of Seraphina Riego.”

He looked down at his feet with gloomy submission.

PART FOURTH 265

“There is a proverb about an enamored woman,” he muttered
to himself, loud enough for me to overhear. Then, stooping de-
liberately to pick up his hat, he flourished it with a great sweep
lower than his knees. His dumpy black back flitted out of the
cabin; and almost directly we heard the sharp click of his flint
and blade outside the door.

CHAPTER VI

OW often the activity of our life is the least reai part of
it! Life, looked upon as a whole, presents itself to my
fancy as a pursuit with open arms of a winged and mag-
nificent dream, hovering just over our heads and casting its glory
upon our hopes. It is in this simple vision, which is one and
enduring, and not in the changing facts, that we must look for
meaning and for truth. The three quiet days we spent together
on board the Lion remain to me memorable and full of import,
eventless and containing the very quintessence of existence. We
shared the sunshine, always together, very close, turning hand in
hand to the sea, whose unstained blueness continued under our feet
the blue above our heads, as though we had been snatched up into
the sky. The insignificant words we exchanged seemed informed
by a sustaining certitude and an admirable gravity, as though
there had been some quality of unerring wisdom in the blind love
of man and woman. From the inexhaustible treasure of her feel-
ings she drew words, glances, gestures that appeased every uneasi-
ness of my heart. In some brief moment of illumination whose
advent my man’s eyes had utterly missed, she had learned all at
once everything there was to know. She knew. She no longer
needed to survey my actions, my words, my thoughts; but she
accorded me the sincere flattery of spell-bound attention, and it was
made intoxicating by her smile. In those short days of a pause,
when, like a swimmer turning on his back, we lived in the trustful
confidence of the sustaining depths, instead of struggling with the
agitation of the surface—in these days we had the time to look at
each other profoundly ; and I saw her smile come back again a little
changed, more meaning and a little less mirthful, as if her lips
had been made stiff by sorrow. But she was young; and youth, the
time of softness, of tenderness, of enthusiasm, and of pity, presents
a surface as hard as marble to the finality of death.
Breathing side by side, drinking in the sunshine, and talking of

266

PART FOURTH 267

ourselves not at all, but casting the sense of our love like a mag-
nificent garment over the wide significance of a world already
conquered, we could not help being made aware of the currents of
excitement and sympathy that converged upon our essential isola-
tion from the life of the ship. It was the excitement of the
adventure brewing for our drinking according to Sebright’s recipe.
People approached us—spoke to us. We attended to them as if
called down from an elevation; we were aware of the kind tone;
and, remaining indisdinct, they retreated, leaving us free to regain
the heights of the lovers’ paradise—a region of tender whispers
and intense silences. Suddenly there would be a short, throaty
laugh behind our backs, and Williams would begin, “ I say, Kemp;
do you call to mind so-and-so?” Invariably some planter or mer-
chant in Jamaica. I never could.

Williams would grunt, “ No? I wonder how you passed your
time away these two years or more. ‘The place isn’t that big.”
His purpose was to cheer me up by some gossip, if only he could
find a common acquaintance to talk over. I believe he thought me
a queer fish. ‘He told me once that everybody he knew in Jamaica
had that precise opinion of me. ‘Then with a chuckle and mutter-
ing, “‘ Warrants—assault—Topnambo—ha, ha!” he would leave
us to ourselves, and continue his waddle up and down the poop. He
wore loose silk trousers, and the round legs inside moved like a con-
trivance made out of two gate-posts.

He was absurd. ‘They all were that before our sweet reason-
ableness. But this atmosphere, full of interest and good will, was
good to breathe. ‘The very steward—the same who had been
hiding in the lazarette during the fight—a hunted creature, dis-
playing the most insignificant anatomy ever inhabited by a quailing
spirit, devoted himself to the manufacture of strange cakes, which
at tea-time he would deposit smoking hot in front of Seraphina’s
place. After each such exploit, he appeared amazed at his audacity
in taking so much upon himself. The carpenter took more than a
day, tinkering at an old ship’s boat. He was a Shetlander—a
sort of shaggy hyperborean giant with a forbidding face, an ap-
praising, contemplative manner, and many nails in his mouth. At
last the time came when he, too, approached our oblivion from
behind, with a large hammer in his hand; but instead of braining

268 ROMANCE

us with one sweep of his mighty arm, he remarked simply in un-
couth accents, “‘ There now; I am thinking she will do well for
what ye want her. I can do no more for ye.”

We turned round, arm-in-arm, to look at the boat. ‘There she
was, lying careened on the deck, with patched sides, in a belt of
chips, shavings, and sawdust; a few pensive sailors stood about,
gazing down at her with serious eyes. Sebright, bent double,
circled slowly on a prowl of minute inspection. Suddenly straight-
ening himself up, he pronounced a curt “ She'll do”; and, without
looking at us at all, went off busily with his rapid stride.

A light sigh floated down‘upon our heads. Williams and his
wife appeared on the poop above us like an allegorical couple
of repletion and starvation, conceived in a fantastic vein on a
balcony. A cigar smoldered in his stumpy red fingers. She had
slipped a hand under his arm, as she would always do the moment
they came near each other. She never looked more wasted and
old-maidish than when thus affirming her wifely rights. But her
eyes were motherly.

“* Ah, my dears!”’ (She usually addressed Seraphina as “ miss,”
and myself as “‘ young sir.”) “Ah, my dears! It seems so heart-
less to be sending you off in such a small boat, even for your own
good.”

“Never fear, Mary. Repaired. Carry six comfortably,” re-
assured Williams in a tremendous mutter, like a bull.

“But why can’t you give them one of the others, Owen? That
big one there?”

“Nonsense, Mary. Never see boat again. Wouldn’t grudge
it. Only Sebright is quite right. Didn’t you hear what Sebright
said? Very sensible. Ask Sebright. He will explain to you
again.”

It was Sebright, with his asperity and his tact, with fits of
brusqueness subdued by an almost affectionate contempt, who
conducted all their affairs, as I have seen a trustworthy and ex-
perienced old nurse rule the infinite perplexities of a room full of
children. His clear-sightedness and mental grip seemed independ-
ent of age and experience, like the ability of genius. He had an
imaginative eye for detail, and, starting from a mere hint, would
go scheming onwards with astonishing precision. His plan, to

PART FOURTH 269

which we were committed—committed helplessly and without
resistance—was based upon the necessity of our leaving the ship.

He had developed it to me that evening, in the cabin, directly
Castro had gone out. He had already got Williams and his wife
to share his view of our situation. He began by laying it down
that in every desperate position there was a loophole for escape.
Like other great men, he was conscious of his ability, and was
inclined to theorize at large for a while. You had to accept the
situation, go with it in a measure; and as you had walked into
trouble with your eyes shut, you had only to continue with your
eyes open. ‘Time was the only thing that could defeat one. If
you had no time, he admitted, you were at a dead wall. In this
case he judged there would be time, because O’Brien, warned al-
ready, would sit tight for a few days, being sure to get hold of us
directly the Lion came into port. It was only if the Lion failed to
turn up within a reasonable term in Havana, that he would take
fright, and take measures to hunt her up at sea. But I might rest
assured that the Lion was going to Havana as fast as the winds
would allow her.

What was, then, the situation? he continued, looking at me
piercingly above Williams’ cropped head. I had run away for
dear life from Cuba (taking with me what was best in it, to be
sure, he interjected, with a faint smile towards Seraphina). I
had no money, no friends (except my friends in this cabin, he was
good enough to say); warrants out against me in Jamaica; no
means to get to England; no safety in the ship. It was no use
shirking that little fact. We must leave the Lion. This was a
hopeless enough position. But it was hopeless only because it was
not looked upon in the right way. We assumed that we had to
leave her forever, while the whole secret of the trick was in this,
that we need only leave her for a time. After O’Brien’s myrmidons
had gone through her, and had been hooted away empty-handed,
she became again, if not absolutely safe, then at least possible—
the only possible refuge for us—the only decent means of reaching
England together, where, he understood, our trouble would cease.
Williams nodded approval heavily.

“The friends of Miss Riego would be glad to know she had
made the passage under the care of a respectable married lady,”

270 ROMANCE

Sebright explained, in that imperturbable manner of his, which
reflected faintly all his inner moods—whether of recklessness, of
jocularity or anxiety—and often his underlying scorn. His gravity
grew perfectly portentous. “Mrs. Williams,” he continued,
‘was, of course, very anxious to do her part creditably. As it
happened, the Lion was chartered for London this voyage; and
notwithstanding her natural desire to rejoin, as soon as possible,
her home and her aged uncle in Bristol, she intended to go with
the young lady in a hackney coach to the very door.”

I had previously told them that the lately appointed Spanish
ambassador in London was a relation of the Riegos, and personally
acquainted with Seraphina, who, nearly two years before, had been
on a short visit to Spain, and had lived for some months with his
family in Madrid, I believe. No trouble or difficulty was to be
apprehended as to proper recognition, or in the matter of rights
and inheritance, and so on. ‘The ambassador would make that his
own affair. And for the rest I trusted the decision of her character
and the strength of her affection. I was not afraid she would let
anyone talk her out of an engagement, the dying wish of her near-
est kinsman, sealed, as it were, with the blood of her father. ‘This-
matter of temporary absence from the Lion, however, seemed to
present an insuperable difficulty. We could not, obviously, be left
for days floating in an open boat outside Havana harbor, waiting
till the ship came out to pick us up. Sebright himself admitted that
at first he did not see how it could be contrived. He didn’t see at
all. He thought and thought. It was enough to sicken one of
every sort of thinking. “Then, suddenly, the few words Castro
had let drop about the sugar estate and the relay of mules came
into his head—providentially, as Mrs. Williams would say. He
fancied that the primitive and grandiose manner for a gentleman
to keep a relay of mules—any amount of mules—in case he should
want to send a letter or two, caused the circumstance to stick in
his mind. At once he had “ our little hidalgo” in, and put him
through an examination.

“He turned fairly sulky, and tried constantly to break out
against you, till Dofia Seraphina here gave him a good sole to,”
Sebright said.

Otherwise it was most satisfactory. ‘The place was accessible

PART FOURTH 271

from the sea through a narrow inlet, opening into a small, per-
fectly sheltered basin at the back of the sand-dunes. ‘The little
river watering the estate emptied itself into that basin. One could
land from a boat there, he understood, as if in a dock—and it was
the very devil if I and Miss Riego could not lie hidden for a few
days on her own property, the more so that, as it came out in the
course of the discussion, while I had “ rushed out to look at the
sunset,” that the manager, or whatever they called him—the fellow
in charge—was the husband of Dofia Seraphina’s old nurse-woman.
Of course, it behooved us to make as little fuss as possible—try to
reach the house along bypaths early in the morning, when all the
slaves would be out at work in the fields. Castro, who professed
to know the locality very well indeed, would be of use. Mean-
time, the Lion would make her way to Havana, as if nothing was
the matter. No doubt all sorts of confounded alguazils and cus-
tom-house hounds would be ready to swarm on board in full cry.
They would be made very welcome. Any strangers on board?
Certainly not. Why should there be? . . . Rio Medio? What
about Rio Medio? Hadn’t been within miles and miles of Rio
Medio; tried this trip to beat up well clear of the coast. Search
the ship? With pleasure—every nook and cranny. He didn’t
suppose they would have the cheek to talk of the pirates; but if they
did venture—what then? Pirates? ‘That’s very serious and dis-
honorable to the power of Spain. Personally, had seen nothing
of pirates. Thought they had all been captured and hanged quite
lately. Rumors of the Lion having been attacked obviously un-
true. Some other ship, perhaps. . . . That was the line to take.
If it didn’t convince them, it would puzzle them altogether. Of
course, Captain Williams, in his great regard for me, had aban-
doned the intention of making an affair of state of the outrage
committed on his ship. He would not lodge any complaint in Ha-
vana—nothing at all. The old women of the Admiralty wouldn’t
be made to sit up this time. No report would be sent to the
admiral either. Only, if the ship were interfered with, and both-
ered under any pretense whatever, once they had been given every
facility to have one good look everywhere, the admiral would be
asked to stop it. And the Spanish authorities would have not a
leg to stand on either, for this simple reason, that they could not

272 ROMANCE

very well own to the sources of their information. Meantime, all
hands on board the Lion had to be taken into confidence; that could
not be avoided. He, Sebright, answered for their discretion while
sober, anyhow; and he promised me that no leave or money would
be given in Havana, for fear they should get on a spree, and let
out something in the grog-shops on shore. We all knew what a
sailor-man was after a glass or two. So that was settled. Now,
as to our rejoining the Lion. ‘This, of necessity, must be left to
me. Counting from the time we parted from her to land on the
coast, the Lion would remain in Havana sixteen days; and if we

_ did not turn up in that time, and the cargo was all on board by
then, Captain Williams would try to remain in harbor on one
pretense or another a few days longer. But sixteen days should
be ample, and it was even better not to hurry up too much. To
arrive on the fifteenth day would be the safest proceeding in a way,
but for the cutting of the thing too fine, perhaps. With all these
mules at our disposal, Sebright didn’t see why we should not make
our way by land, pass through the town at night, or in the earliest
morning, and go straight on board the Lion—perhaps use some
sort of disguise. He couldn’t say. He was out of it there. Black-
ened faces or something. Anyway, we would be looked out for
on board night and day.

Later on, however, we had learned from Castro that the estate
possessed a sailing craft of about twenty tons, which made frequent
trips to Havana. ‘These sugar droghers belonging to the planta-
tions (every estate on the coast had one or more) went in and out
of the harbor without being taken much notice of. Sometimes the
battery at the water’s edge on the north side or a custom-house
guard would hail them, but not often—and even then only to ask
the name, where from, and for the number of sugar-hogsheads on
board. “ By heavens! That’s the very thing!” rejoiced Sebright.
And it was agreed that this would be our best way. We should
time our arrival for early morning, or else at dusk. The craft that
brought us in should be made, by a piece of unskillful management,
to fall aboard the Lion, and remain alongside long enough to give
us time to sneak in through an open deck-port.

The whole occurrence must be so contrived as to wear the ap-
pearance of a pure accident to the onlookers, should there be any.

PART FOURTH 273.

Shouting and an exchange of abuse on both parts should sound very
true. Then the drogher, getting herself clear, would proceed in-
nocently to the custom-house steps, where all such coasters had to
report themselves on arrival. ‘‘ Never fear. We shall put in
some loud and scandalous cursing,” Sebright assured me. “ The
boys will greatly enjoy that part, I dare say.”

Remained to consider the purpose of the schooner that had
come out of Rio Medio to hang on our skirts. It was doubtful
whether it was in our power to shake her off. Sebright was full
of admiration for her sailing qualities, coupled with infinite con-
tempt for the “ lubberly gang on board.”

“Tf I had the handling of her, now,” he said, “ I would At my
position as near as I liked, and stick there. It seems almost as if
she would do it of herself, if those imbeciles would only let her
have her own way. I never yet saw a Spaniard, good or bad, that
was anything of a sailor. As it is, we may maintain a distance
that would make it difficult for them to see what we are about.
And if not, then—why, you must take your leave of us at night.”

He didn’t know that, but for the dismalness of such a departure,
it were not just as well. Who could tell what eyes might be
watching on shore.

“You know I never pretended my plan was quite safe. But -
have you got another?”

I made no answer, because I had no other, and could not think
of one. Incredible as it may appear, not only my heart, but my
mind, also, in the awakened comprehension of my love, refused
to grapple with difficulties. My thoughts raced ahead of ships
and pursuing men, into a dream of cloudless felicity without end.
And I don’t think Sebright expected any suggestion from me.
This took place during one of our busy talks—only he and I—
alone in his cabin. He had been washing his hands, making ready
for tea.

“Do you know,” he said, turning full on me, and wiping his
fingers carefully with a coarse towel—‘‘ do you know, I shouldn’t
wonder if that schooner were not keeping watch on us, in suspicion
of just some such move on our part. "Tis extraordinary how
clever the greatest fool may show himself sometimes. Only, with
their lubberly Spanish seamanship, they would expect us, probably,

274 ROMANCE

to make a whole ceremony of your landing: ship hove to for hours
close in shore, a boat going off to land and returning, and all such
pother. ‘ We are sure to see their little show,’ they think to them-
selves. Eh? What? Whereas we shall keep well clear of the
land when the time comes, and drop you in the dark without as
much check on our way as there is in the wink of an eye. Hey?

Mind, Mr. Kemp, you take the boat out of sight up that
little river, in case they should have a fancy, as they go along
after us, to peep into that inlet. As I have said, it wouldn’t do
to trust too much in any fool’s folly.”

And now the time was approaching; the time to awake and step
forth out of the temple of sunshine and love—of whispers and
silences. It had come. ‘The night before both Williams and
Sebright had been on deck, working the ship with an anxious care
to take the utmost advantage of every favoring flaw in the con-
trary breeze. In the morning I was told there was a norther
brewing. A norther is a tempestuous gale. I saw no signs of it.
The realm of the sun, like the vanished one of the stars, appeared
to my senses to be profoundly asleep, and breathing as gently as a
child upon the ship. The Lion, too, seemed to lie wrapped in an
enchanted slumber from the water-line to the tops of her upright
masts. And yet she moved with the breath of the world, but so
imperceptibly that it was the coast that seemed to be nearing
her like a line of low vapor blown along the water. Between
Williams and Sebright Castro pointed with his one arm, and a
splutter of guttural syllables fell like hail out of his lips. The
other two seemed incredulous. He stamped with both his feet
angrily. Finally they went below together, to look at the chart,
I suppose. ‘They came up again very fast, one after another, and
stood in a row, looking on as before. Three more dissimilar human
beings it would have been difficult to imagine.

Dazzling white patches, about the size of a man’s hand, came out
between sky and water. They grew in width, and ran together
with a hummocky outline into a continuous undulation of sand-
dunes. Here and there this rampart had a gap like a breach made
by guns. Mrs. Williams, behind me, blew her nose faintly; her
eyes were red, but she did not look at us. No eye was turned our
way, and the spell of the coast was on her, too. A low, dark head-

PART FOURTH 275

land broke out to view through the dunes, and stood there con-
spicuous amongst the heaps of dazzling sand, like a small man
frowning. A voice on deck pronounced:

“That’s right. Here’s his landmark. The fellow knew very
well what he was talking about.”

It was Sebright’s voice, and Castro, strolling away triumphantly,
affected to turn his back on the land. He had recognized the
formation of the coast about the inlet long before anybody else
could distinguish the details. His word had been doubted. He
was offended, and passed us by, wrapping himself up closely. One
of Seraphina’s locks blew against my cheek, and this last effort of
the breeze remained snared in the silken meshes of her hair.

““There’s not enough wind to fill the sail of a toy boat,”
grumbled Sebright; ‘and you can’t pull this heavy gig ashore
with only that one-armed man at the other oar.” He was sorry
he could not send us off with four good rowers. ‘The norther
might be coming on before they could return to the ship, and—
apart from the presence of four English sailors on the coast being
sure to get talked about—there was the difficulty in getting them
back on board in Havana. We could, no doubt, smuggle ourselves
in; but six people would make too much of a show. Qn the other
hand, the absence of four men out of the ship’s company could not
be accounted for very well to the authorities. ‘‘ We can’t say they
all died, and we threw them overboard. It would be too startling.
No; you must go alone, and leave us at the first breath of wind;
and that, I fear, Il be the first of the norther, too.”

He threw his head back, and hailed, ‘‘ Do you see anything of
that schooner from aloft there?”

“ Nothing of her, sir,” answered a man perched, with dangling
feet, astride the very end of the topsail yardarm. He paused,
scanned the space from under the flat of his hand, and added,
shouting with deliberation, ‘“‘ There’s—a—haze—to seaward, sir.”
The ship, with her decks sprinkled over with men in twos and
threes, sent up to his ears a murmur of satisfaction.

If we could not see her, she could not see us. This was a
favorable circumstance. To the infinite gratification of everyone
on board, it had been discovered at daylight that the schooner had
lost touch with us during the hours of darkness—either through

276 ROMANCE

unskillful handling, or from some accidental disadvantage of the
variable wind. I had been informed of it, directly I showed myself
on deck in the morning, by several men who had radiant grins, as
if some great piece of luck had befallen them, one and all. They
shared their unflagging attention between the land and the sea-
horizon, pointing out to each other, with their tattooed arms, the
features of the coast, nodding knowingly towards the open. At
midday most of them brought out their dinners on deck, and could
be seen forward, each with a tin plate in the left hand, gesticu-
lating amicably with clasp knives. A small white handkerchief
hung from Mrs. Williams’ fingers, and now and then she touched
her eyes lightly, one after the other. Her husband and Sebright,
with a grave mien, stamped busily around the binnacle aft, chang-
ing places, making way for each other, stooping in turns to glance
carefully along the compass card at the low bluff, like two gun-
ners laying a piece of heavy ordnance for an important shot. The
steward, emerging out of the companion, rang a hand-bell vio-
lently, and remained scared at the failure of that appeal. After
waiting for a moment, he produced a further feeble tinkle, and
sank down out of sight, with resignation.

A white sun, as if blazing with the pallor of fury, swung past
the zenith in a profound and universal stillness. ‘There was not a
wrinkle on the sea; it presented a lustrous and glittering level,
like the polished facet of a gem. In the cabin we sat down to the
meal, not even pretending a desire to eat, exchanging vague
phrases, hanging our heads over the empty plates. But the regular
footsteps of the boatswain left in charge hesitated, stopped near
the skylight. He said in an imperfectly assured voice, “‘ Seems as
if there was a steadier draught coming now.” At this we rose
from the table impetuously, as though he had shouted an alarm
of fire, and Mrs. Williams, with a little cry, ran round to Sera-
phina. Leaving the two women locked in a silent embrace, the
captain, Sebright, and myself hurried out on deck.

Every man in the ship had done the same. Even the shiny black
cook had come out of his galley, and was already comfortably
seated on the rail, baring his white teeth to the sunshine.

“ Just about enough to blow out a farthing dip,” said Sebright,
in a disappointed mutter.

PART FOURTH 277

He thought, however, we had better not wait for more. There
would be too much presently. Some sailors hauled the boat along-
side, the rest lined the rail as for a naval spectacle, and Williams
stared blankly. We were waiting for Seraphina, who appeared,
attended by Mrs. Williams, looking more kind, bloodless, and
ascetic than ever. But my girl’s cheeks glowed; her eyes sparkled
audaciously. She had done up her-hair in some way that made
it fit her head like a cap. It became her exceedingly, and the
decision of her movements, the white serenity of her brow, dazzled
me as if I had never seen her before. She seemed less childlike,
older, ripe for this adventure in a new development of strength
and courage. She inclined her head slowly at the gaping sailors,
who had taken their caps off.

As soon as she appeared, Castro, who had been leaning against
the bulwark, started up, and with a muttered “ Adios, sefores,”’
went down the overside ladder and ensconced himself in the bow
of the boat. The leave-taking was hurried over. Williams gave
no sign of feeling, except, perhaps, for the greater intensity of
his stare, which passed beyond our shoulders in the very act of
handshaking. Sebright helped Seraphina down into the boat, and
ran up again nimbly. Mrs. Williams, with her slim hand held in
both mine, uttered a few incoherent words—about men’s promises
and the happiness of women, as I thought; but, truth to say, my
own suppressed excitement was too considerable for close attention.
I only knew that I had given her my confidence, that complete and
utter confidence which neither wisdom nor power, alone, can com-
mand. And, suddenly, it occurred to me that the heiress of a
splendid name and fortune, down in the boat there, had no better
friend in the world than this woman, who had come to us out of
the waste of the sea, opening her simple heart to our need, like a
pious and naive hermit in a wilderness throwing open the door of
his cell to strange wayfarers.

“Mrs. Williams,’ I stammered. “If we—if I—there’s no
saying what may happen to any of us. If she ever comes to you
—if she ever is in want of help. . . .”

“Yes, yes. Always, always—like my own daughter.”

And the good woman broke down, as if, indeed, I were taking
her own daughter away.

278 ROMANCE

“Nonsense, Mary!” Williams advanced, muttering tremen-
dously. ‘They are not going round the world. Dare say get
ashore in time for supper.”

He stared through her without expression, as if she had been
thin air, but she seized his arm, of course, and he gave me, then,
an amazingly rapid wink which, I suppose, meant that I should
SO) 5s

“All right there?” asked Sebright from above, as soon as I
had taken my seat in the stern sheets by the side of Seraphina. He
was standing on the poop deck ready with a sign for letting go
the end of our painter on deck; but before I could answer in the
affirmative, Castro, ensconced forward under his hat, drew his
ready blade across the rope, as it were a throat.

At once a narrow strip of water opened between the boat and
the ship, and our long-prepared departure, hastened thus by half
a second, seemed to strike everybody dumb with surprise,
as if we had taken wings to ourselves to fly away. Hastily I
grasped the tiller to give the boat a sheer, and heard a sort of loud
gasp in the air above. A row of heads, posed on chins all along the
rail, stared after us with unanimous fixity. Mrs. Williams
averted her face on her husband’s shoulder. Behind the couple,
Sebright raised his cap gravely.

Our little sail filled to a breeze which was much too feeble to
produce a perceptible effect on the ship, and we left behind us her
towering form, as one recedes from a tall white spire on a plain.
I laid the boat’s head straight for the dwarf headland, marking
the mouth of the inlet on the interminable range of sand-dunes.
We drove on with a smart ripple, but before we felt sufficiently
settled to exchange a few words the animated sound languished
suddenly, paused altogether, and, with a renewed murmur under
our feet, seemed to lose itself below the glassy waters,

CHAPTER VII

HE calm had returned. ‘The sea, changing from the

warm glitter of a gem, and attuned to the grays and

blacks of space, resembled a monstrous cinder under a
sky of ashes.

The sun had disappeared, smothered in these clouds that had
formed themselves all at once and everywhere, like some swift
corruption of the upper air. For the best part of the afternoon
the ship and the boat remained lying at right angles, within half a
mile of each other. What light was left in the world, cut off from
the source of life, seemed to sicken with a strange decay. “The long
stretch of sands and the sails of the motionless vessel stood out
lividly pale in universal gloom. And yet the state of the atmos-
’ phere was such that we could see clear-cut the very folds in the
steep face of the dunes, and the figures of the people moving on the
poop of the Lion. ‘There was always somebody there that had the
aspect of watching us. Then, with some excitement, we saw them
on board haul up the mainsail and lower the gig.

The four oars beat the somber water, rising and falling appar-
ently in the same place. She was an interminable time coming on,
but as she neared us I was surprised at her dashing speed. Se-
bright, who steered, laid her alongside smartly, and two of his
men, clambering over without a word, lowered our lug at once.

“We came to reef your sail for you. You couldn’t manage that
very well with a one-armed crew,” said the young mate quietly in
the enormous stillness. In his opinion, we couldn’t expect now
any wind till the first squall came down. ‘This flurry, as he called
it, would send us in smoking, and he was sure it would help the
ship, as well, into Havana, in about twenty-four hours. He didn’t
think that it would come very heavy at first; and, once landed, we
need not care how hard it blew.

He tendered me over the gunwale a pocket-flask covered with
leather, and with a screwed silver stopper in the shape of a cup.

279

280 ; ROMANCE

It was from the captain; full of prime rum. We were pretty
sure to get wet. He thrust, also, into my hands a gray woolen
shawl. Mrs. Williams thought my young lady might be glad
of it at night. ‘‘ The dear old woman has shut herself up inside
their stateroom, and is praying for you now,” he concluded.
“ Look alive, boys.”
His men did not answer him, but at some words he addressed to
Castro, the latter, in the bows and looking at the coast, growled
with a surly impatience. He was perfectly sure of the entrance.
Had been in and out several times. Yes. At night, too. Sebright.
_ then turned to me. After all, it was not so difficult. The inlet
bore due south from us, and the wind would come true from the
north. Always did in these bursts. I had only to keep dead
before it. ‘‘ The clouds will light you in at the last,” he added
meaningly, glancing upwards.

The two sailors, having finished reefing, hoisted, lowered, and
hoisted again the yard to see that the gear ran clear, and without
one look at us, stepped back into the gig, and sat down in their
places. For a moment longer we lay together, touching sides. Se-
bright extended his hand from boat to boat.

“You are in God’s care now, Kemp,” he said, looking up at me,
and with an unexpected depth of feeling in his tone. ‘‘ Take no
turn with the sheet on any account, and if you feel it coming too
heavy, let fly and chance it. Did I tell you we have sighted the
schooner from aloft? No? We can just make her out from the.
main-yard away astern under the land. ‘That don’t matter now.
- . . Sefiorita, I kiss your hands.” He liked to air his Spanish.
. . - “‘ Keep cool whatever happens. Dead before it—mind. And
count on sixteen days from to-morrow. Well. No more. Give
way, boys.”

He never looked back. We watched the boat being hoisted and °
secured. Shortly afterwards, as we were observing the Lion short-
ening sail, the first of the rain descended between her and us like
a lowered veil. For a time she remained mistily visible, dark and
gaunt with her bared spars. ‘The downpour redoubled; she dis-
appeared; and our hearts were stirred to a faster beat.

The shower fell on us, around us, descending perpendicularly,
with a steady force; and the thunder rolled far off, as if coming

PART FOURTH 281

from under the sea. Sometimes the muffled rumbling stopped, and
let us hear plainly the gentle hiss and the patter of the drops
falling upon a vast expanse. Suddenly, mingled with a loud de-
tonation right over our heads, a burst of light outlined under the
bellying strip of our sail the pointed crown of Castro’s hat, re-
posing on a heap of black clothing huddled in the bows. The
darkness swallowed it all. I.swung Seraphina in front of me, and
made her sit low on the stern sheets beneath my feet. A lot of
foam boiled up around the boat, and we had the sensation of having
been sent flying from a catapult.

Everything was black—perfectly black. At intervals, headlong
gusts of rain swept over our heads. I suppose I did keep sufh-
ciently cool, but in every flash of lightning the wind, the sea, the
clouds, the rain, and the boat appeared to rush together thunder-
ing upon the coast. ‘The line of sands, bordered with a belt of
foam, zigzagged dazzlingly upon an earth as black as the clouds;
only the headland, with every vision, remained somber and un-
moved. At last it rose up right before the boat. Blue lightning
streamed on a lane of tumbling waters at its foot. Was this the
entrance? With the vague notion of shortening sail, I let the
sheet go from my hand. ‘There was a jerk, the crack of snapped
wood, and the next flash showed me Castro emerging from the
ruins of mast and sail. He uprose, hurling the wreck from him
overboard, then flickered out of sight with his arm waving to the
left, and I bore accordingly on the tiller. In a moment I saw him
again, erect forward, with the arm pointing to the right, and I
obeyed his signal. The clouds, straining with water and fire,
were, indeed, lighting us on our way. A wave swelled astern,
chasing us in; rocking frightfully, we glanced past a stationary
mass of foam—a sandbar—breakers. . . . It was terrible. .
Suddenly, the motion of the boat changed, and the flickers of light-
ning fell into a small, land-locked basin. ‘The wind tore deep
furrows in it, howling and scuffing behind the dunes. Spray flew
from the whole surface, the entire pool of a bay seemed to heave
bodily upwards, and I saw Castro again, with his face to me this
time. His black cloak was blowing straight out from his throat,
his mouth yawned wide; he shouted directions, but in an instant
darkness sealed my eyes with its impenetrable impress. It was

282 ~ ROMANCE

impossible to steer now; the boat swung and reeled where she
listed; a violent shock threw me sideways off my seat. I felt her
turning over, and, gathering Seraphina in my arms, I leaped out "
before she capsized. I leaped clear out into shallow water.

I should never in my life have thought myself capable of such
a feat, and yet I did it with assurance, with no effort that I can
remember. More than that—I managed, after the leap, to keep
my feet in the clinging, staggering clutch of water charged with
sand, which swirled heavily about my knees. It kept on hurling
itself at my legs from behind, while I waded across the narrow
strip of sand with an inspired firmness of step defying all the power
of the elements. I felt the harder ground at last, but not before
I had caught a momentary glimpse of a black and bulky object
tumbling over and over in the advancing and withdrawing liquid
flurry of the beach.

“ Sit still here on the ground,” I shouted to Seraphina, though
flights of spray enveloped us completely. ‘‘I am going back for
Castro.”

I faced about, putting my head down. He had been undoubtedly
knocked over; and an old man, with only one hand to help him-
self with, ran a very serious risk of being buffeted into insensibility,
and thus coming to his death in some four feet of water. The
violent glare disclosed a body, entangled in a cloak, rolling about
helplessly between land and water, as it were. I dashed on in the
dark; a wave went over my head as I stooped, nearly waist-deep,
groping. His rotary motion, in that smother, made it extremely
difficult to obtain any sort of hold. A little more, and he would
have knocked my legs from under me, but it was as if my grim
determination were by itself of a saving nature. He submitted to
being hauled up the beach, passively, like a sack. It was a heavy
drag on the sand; I felt him bump behind me on the edge of the
harder ground, and a deluge fell uninterruptedly from above. He
lay prone on his face, like a corpse, between Seraphina and myself.
We could not remain there, however. But where to go? What
to do? In what direction to look for a refuge? Was there any
shelter near by? How were we to reach it? How were we to
move at all? No doubt he had expired; and the earth, swept,
deluged, glimmering fiercely and devastated with an awful uproar,

PART FOURTH 283

appeared no longer habitable. A thunder-clap seemed to crash
new life into him; the world flared all round, as if turning to a
spark, and he was seen sitting up dazedly, like one called up from
the dead. Through it all he had preserved his hat.

It was fixed firmly down under his chin with a handkerchief,
the side rims over his ears like flaps, and, for the rest, presenting
the appearance of a coal-scuttle bonnet behind, as well as in front.
We followed its peculiar aspect. Driving on under this inde-
structible headgear, he flickered in and out of the world, while,
with entwined arms and leaning back against the wind with all
our might, Seraphina and myself were borne along in his train.
He knew of a shelter; and this knowledge, perhaps, and also his
evident familiarity with the topography of the country, made him
appear indomitably confident in the storm.

A small plain of coarse grass was bounded by the steep spur of
arise. To the left a little river would burst, all at once, in all its
windings into a bluish sulphurous glow; and between the crashes
of thunder there was heard the long-drawn, whistling swish of the
rushes and cane-brakes springing on the boggy ground. We skirted
the rise. The rain beat against it; the lightning showed its stream-
ing and furrowed surface. We stumbled in the gusts. We felt
under our feet, mud, sand, rocky inequalities of the ground, and
the moving stones in the bed of a torrent, which broke headlong
against our ankles. The entrance of a deep ravine opened.

Its lower sides palpitated with the ceaseless tossing of dwarf
trees and bushes; and, motionless above the somber tumult of the
slopes, the monumental stretch of bare rock rose on high, level at
the top, and emitting a ghastly yellow sheen in the flashes. The
thunder claps rolled ponderously between the narrowing walls of
that chasm, that was all aflame one moment, and all black the
next. A torrent springing at its head, and dashing with inaudible
fury along the bottom, seemed to gleam placidly amongst the
rounded forms of inky bushes and pale bowlders below our path.
Enormous eddies of wind from above made us stop short and totter
breathless, clinging to each other.

Castro sustained Seraphina on the other side; but frequently he
had to leave us and move ahead, looking for the way. There was,
in fact, a half-obliterated path winding along the less steep of the

284 ROMANCE

two sides; and we struggled after our guide with the unthinking
fortitude of despair. He was being disclosed to us so suddenly,
extinguished so swiftly, that he appeared, always, as if motionless
and posturing in a variety of climbing attitudes. ‘The rise of the
bottom was very steep, and the last hundred yards really stiff.
We did them practically on our hands and knees. The dislodged
stones bounded away from under our feet, unheard, like puft-
balls.

At the top I tried to make of my body a shelter for Seraphina.
The wind howled and roared over us.

“Up! Vamos! The worst is yet before us,” shrieked Castro
in my ear.

What could he mean by this? The play of lightning opened
to view only a vast and rolling upland. Fire flowed in sheets
undulating with the expanses of long grass amongst the trees,
here and there, in coal-black clumps, and flashed violently against
a low edge of forests very dark and far away.

“Let us go!” he cried. ‘‘ Courage, sefiorita! ”

Courage! The populace said of her that she had never needed
to put her foot to the ground. If courage consists, for a being so
tender, in toiling and enduring without faltering and plaint,—even
to the very limit of physical power,—then she was the most cour-
ageous woman in the world, as she was the most charming, most
faithful, most generous, and the most worthy of love. I tried
not to think of her racked limbs, for the very pain and pity of it.
We retraced our steps, but now following the edge of that preci-
pice out of which we had emerged. I had peremptorily insisted on
carrying her. She put her arms round my neck and, to my uplifted
heart, she weighed no heavier than a feather. Castro, grasping
my arm, guided my steps and gave me support against the wind.

There was a distinct lull. Even the thunder had rolled away,
dwindling to a deep mutter. Castro fell on his knees in front
of me.

“Tt is here,” I heard him scream.

I set Seraphina down. A hooked dart of fire tore in two the
thick canopy of clouds. I started back from the edge.

“What! Here?” I yelled.

“Sefior—Si/ There is a cavern below. . . .”

PART FOURTH 285

I had seen a ledge clinging to the face of the rock.

It was a cornice inclining downwards upon the wall of the
precipice, as you see, sometimes, a flight of stairs built against the
outside wall of a house. And it resembled a stair roughly, with
long, sloping steps, wet with rain.

“Por Dios, sefior, do not let us stay to think here, or we shall
perish in this tempest.”

He howled, gesticulated, shrieked with all the strength of his
lungs. He knew these tornadoes. Brute beasts would be found
lying dead in the fields in the morning. ‘This was the beginning
only. The lightning showed his kneeling form, the eager upturned
face, and a finger pointing urgently into the abyss. The wind was
nothing! Nothing to what would come after. As he shrieked
these words I was feeling the crust of the earth vibrate, absolutely
vibrate, under the soles of my feet, with the sound of thunder.

He unfastened his cloak, and was seen to struggle above his head
with the hovering and flapping cloth, as though he had captured
a black and pugnacious bird. We mastered at last a corner each,
and then we started to twist the whole, as if to wring the water
out. We produced, thus, a sort of short rope, the thickness of a
cable, and the descent began.

“ Do not look behind you. Do not look,” Castro screeched.

The first downward steps were terrible, but as soon as our heads
had sunk below the level of the plain it was better, for we had
turned about to the rock, moving sideways, cautiously, one step
at a time, as if inspecting its fractured roughness for traces of a
mysterious inscription. Castro, with one end of the twisted cloak
in his hand, went first; I held the other ; and between us, Seraphina,
the rope at her back, imitated our movements, with her loosened
hair flying high in the wind, and her pale, rigid head as if deaf to
the crashes. I saw the drawn stillness of her face, her dilated
eyes staring within three inches of the strata. ‘The strain on our
prudence was tremendous. The knowledge of the precipice behind
must have affected me. Explain it as you will, several times during
that descent I felt my brain slip away from my control, and suggest
a desire to fling myself over backwards. The twigs of the bushes,
growing a little below the outer edge of the path, swished at my
calves,

- 286 ROMANCE

Castro stopped. The cornice ended as a broken stairway hangs
upon nothing. A tall, narrow arch stood black in the rock, with
a sill three feet high at least. Castro clambered over; his head
and torso, when he turned about, were lighted up blindingly be-
tween the inner walls at every flash. Seeing me lay hold of Sera-
phina, he yelled:

“Sefior, mind! It’s death if you stagger back.”

I lifted her up, and put her over like a child; and, no sooner in
myself, felt my strength leave all my limbs as water runs out of an
overturned vessel. I could not have lifted up a child’s doll then.
Directly, with a wild little laugh, she said to me:

“‘ Juan—I shall never dare come out.”

I hugged her silently to my breast.

Castro went ahead. It was a narrow passage; our elbows
touched the sides all the way. He struck at his flint regularly,
sparks streamed down from his hand; we felt a freshness, a sense
of space, as though we had come into another world. His voice
directed us to turn to the left, then cried in the dark, “‘ Stand still.”
A blue gleam darted after us, and retired without having done
anything against the tenebrous body of gloom, and the thunder
rolled far in, unobstructed, in leisurely, organ-like peals, as if
through an amazingly vast emptiness of a temple. But where was
Castro? We heard snappings, rustlings, mutters; sparks streamed,
now here, now there. We dared not move. There might have
been steep ridges—deep holes in that cavern. And suddenly we
discovered him on all-fours, puffing out his cheeks above a small
flame kindled in a heap of dry sticks and leaves.

It was an abode of darkness, enormous, without sonority.
Feeble currents of air, passing on our faces, gave us a feeling of
being in the open air on a night more black than any known night
had been before. One’s voice lost itself in there without reso-
nance, as if on a plain; the smoke of our blaze drove aslant, scin-
tillating with red sparks, and went trailing afar, as if under the
clouds of a starless sky. Ultimately, it must have escaped through
some imperceptible crevices in the roof of rock. In one place, only,
the light of the fire illuminated a small part of the rugged wall,
where the shadows of our bodies would surge up, repeating our
movements, and suddenly be gone from our side. Everywhere

PART FOURTH 287

else, pressing upon the reflection of the flames, the blind darkness
of the vault might have extended away for miles and miles.

Castro thought it probable. He made me observe the incline
of the floor. It sloped down deep and far. For miles, no doubt.
Nobody could tell; no one had seen the end of it. This cavern
had been known of old. ‘This brushwood, these dead leaves, that
would make a couch for her Excellency, had been stored for years
—perhaps by men who had died long ago. Look at the dry rot.
These large piles of branches were found stacked up when he
first beheld this place. Caramba! What toil! What fatigue!
Let us thank the saints, however.

Nevertheless, he shook his head at the strangeness of it. His
cloak, spread out wide, was drying in the light, while he busied
himself with his hat, turning it before the blaze in both hands,
tenderly; and his tight little figure, lit up in front from head to
foot, steamed from every limb. His round, plump shoulders and
gray shock head smoked quietly at the top. Suddenly, the fine
mesh of wrinkles on his face ran together, shrinking like a torn
cobweb; a spasmodic sound, quite new to me, was heard. He had
laughed.

The warmth of the fire had penetrated our chilled bodies with
a feeling of comfort and repose. Williams’ flask was empty; and
this was a new Castro, mellowed, discoursive, almost genial. It
was obvious to me that, had it not been for him, we two, lost and
wandering in the storm, should have died from exposure and ex-
haustion—from some accident, perhaps. On the other hand I had
indubitably saved his life, and he had already thanked me in high-
flown language; very grave, but exaggerating the horrors of his
danger, as a woman might have done for the better expression of
gratitude. He had been greatly shocked. Spaniards, as a race,
have never, for all their conquests, been on intimate terms with
the sea. As individuals I have often observed in them, especially
in the lower classes, a sort of dread, a dislike of salt water, mingled
with contempt and fear.

Castro, lifting up his right arm, protested that I had given a
proof of very noble devotion in rushing back for an old man into
that black water. Ough! He shuddered. He had given himself
up—por Dios! He hinted that, at his age, he could not have cared

288 ROMANCE

much for life; but then, drowning in the sea was a death abhorrent
to an old Christian. You died brutally—without absolution, and
unable, even, to think of your sins. He had had his mouth filled
with horrid, bitter sand, too. fui! He gave me a thousand
thanks. But these English were wonderful in their way. .. .
Ah! Caramba! They were...

A large protuberance of the rocky floor had been roughly chipped
into the semblance of a seat, God only knows by what hands and
in what forgotten age. Seraphina’s inclined pose, her torn dress,
the wet tresses lying over her shoulders, her homeless aspect, made
me think of a beautiful and miserable gypsy girl drying her hair
before a fire. A little foot, advanced, gleamed white on the instep
in front of the ruddy glare; her clasped fingers nursed one raised
knee; and, shivering no longer, her head drooping in still profile,
she listened to us, frowning thoughtfully upon the flames.

In the guise of a beggar-maid, and fair, like a fugitive princess
of romance, she sat concealed in the very heart of her dominions.
This cavern belonged to her, as Castro remarked, and the bay of
the sea, and the earth above our heads, the rolling upland, herds
of cattle, fields of sugar-cane—even as far as the forest away there;
the forest itself, too. And there were on that estate, alone, over
two hundred Africans, he was able to tell us. He boasted of the
wealth of the Riegos. Her Excellency, probably, did not know
such details. “ITWo hundred—certainly. ‘The estate of Don Vin-
cente Salazar was on the other side of the river. Don Vincente
was at present suffering the indignity of a prison for a small matter
of a quarrel with another caballero—who had died lately—and
all, he understood, through the intrigues of the prior of a certain
convent; the uncle, they said, of the dead caballero. Bah! There
was something to get. "These fat friars were like the lean wolves
of Russia—hungry for everything they could see. Never enough,
Cuerpo de Dios! Never enough! Like their good friend who
helped them in their iniquities, the Juez O’Brien, who had been
getting rich for years on the sublime generosity of her Excellency’s
blessed father. In the greatness of his nobility, Don Balthasar
of holy memory had every right to be obstinate. . . . Basta! He
would speak no more; only there is a saying in Castile that fools
and obstinate people make lawyers rich. . . .

PART FOURTH 289

“Vuestra Senoria,’ he cried, checking himself, slapping his
breast penitently, “deign to forgive me. I have been greatly
exalted by the familiarity of the two last men of your house—
allowed to speak freely because of my fidelity. . . . Alas!
Alas!”

Seraphina, on the other side of the fire, made a vague gesture,
and took her chin in her hand without looking at him.

“Patience,” he mumbled to himself very audibly. ‘‘ He is rich,
this picaro, O’Brien. But there is, also, a proverb—that no riches
shall avail in the day of vengeance.”

Noticing that we had begun to whisper together, he threw
himself before the fire, and was silent.

“Promise me one thing, Juan,” murmured Seraphina.

I was kneeling by the side of her seat.

“ By all that’s holy,” I cried, “I shall force him to come out
and fight fair—and kill him as an English gentleman may.”

“Not that! Not that!” she interrupted me. She did not
mean me to do that. It was what she feared. It would be de-
livering myself into that man’s hands. Did I think what that
meant? It would be delivering her, too, into that man’s power.
She would not survive it. And if I desired her to live on, I must
keep out of O’Brien’s clutches.

“In my thoughts I have bound my life to yours, Juan, so fast
that the stroke which cuts yours, cuts mine, too, No death can
separate us.”

“No,” I said.
And she took my head in her hands, and looked into my eyes.
“No more mourning,” she whispered rapidly. ‘“‘ No more.

IT am too young to have a lover’s grave in my life—and tco proud
to-supmity. 2)”

“Never,” I protested ardently. “ That couldn’t be.”

“Therefore look to it, Juan, that you do not sacrifice your life
which is mine, either to your love—or—or—to revenge.” She
bowed her head; the falling hair concealed her face. “For it
would be in vain.”

“The cloak is perfectly dry now, sefiorita,” said Castro, re-
clining on his elbow on the edge of the darkness.

We two stepped out towards the entrance, leaving her on her

290 ROMANCE

knees, in silent prayer, with her hands clasped on her forehead,
and leaning against the rugged wall of rock. Outside, the earth,
enveloped in fire and uproar, seemed to have been given over to
the fury of a devil.

Yes. She was right. O’Brien was a formidable and deadly
enemy. I wished ourselves on board the Lion chaperoned by Mrs.
Williams, and in the middle of the Atlantic. Nothing could make
us really safe from his hatred but the vastness of the ocean. Mean-
time we had a shelter, for that night, at least, in this cavern that
seemed big enough to contain, in its black gloom of a burial vault,
all the dust and passions and hates of a nation. .. .

Afterwards Castro and I sat murmuring by the diminished fire.
He had much to say about the history of this cave. There was a
tradition that the ancient buccaneers had held their revels in it.
The stone on which the sefiorita had been sitting was supposed to
have been the throne of their chief. A ferocious band they were,
without the fear of God or devil—mostly English, The Rio
Medio picaroons had used this cavern, occasionally, up to a year or
so ago. But there were always ugly affairs with the people on the
estate—the vaqgueros. In his younger days Don Balthasar, having
whole leagues of grass land here, had introduced a herd of cattle;
then. as the Africans are useless for that work, he had ordered some
peons from Mexico to be brought over with their families—igno-
rant men, who hardly knew how to make the sign of the cross. The
quarrels had been about the cattle, which the Lugarefos killed for
meat. ‘The peons rode over them, and there were many wounds
on both sides. Then, the last time a Rio Medio schooner was
lying here (after looting a ship outside), there was some gam-
bling going on (they played round this very stone), and Manuel
—(Si, sefior, this same Manuel the singer—Bestia/)—in a dispute
over the stakes, killed a peon, striking him unexpectedly with a
knife in the throat. No vengeance was taken for this, because the
Lugarefios sailed away at once; but the widow made a great noise,
and some rumors came to the ears of Don Balthasar himself—for
he, Castro, had been honored with a mission to visit the estate.
‘That was even the first occasion of Manuel’s hate for him—Castro.
And, as usual, the Intendente after all settled the matter as he
liked, and nothing was done to Manuel. Don Balthasar was old,

PART FOURTH 291

and, besides, too great a noble to be troubled with the doings of
such vermin. . . . And Castro began to yawn.

At daybreak—he explained—he would start for the hacienda
early, and return with mules for Seraphina and myself. The
buildings of the estate were nearly three leagues away. All this
tract of the country on the side of the sea was very deserted, the
sugar-cane fields worked by the slaves lying inland, beyond the
habitations. Here, near the coast, there were only the herds of
cattle ranging the savannas and the peons looking after them, but
even they sometimes did not come in sight of the sea for weeks
together. He had no fear of being seen by anybody on his journey;
we, also, could start without fear in daylight, as soon as he brought
the mules. For the rest, he would make proper arrangements for
secrecy with the husband of Seraphina’s nurse—Enrico, he called
him: a silent Galician; a graybeard worthy of confidence.

One of his first cares had been to grub out of his soaked clothes
a handful of tobacco, and now he turned over the little drying
heap critically. He hunted up a fragment of maize leaf some-
where upon his bosom. His face brightened. ‘‘ Bueno,” he
muttered, very pleased.

“ Sefior—good-night,” he said, more humanized than I had sup-
posed possible; or was it only that I was getting to know him
better? “And thanks. ‘There’s that in life which even an old
tired man. . . . Here I, Castro . . . old and sad, sefior. Yes,
sefior—nothing of mine in all the world—and yet. . . . But
what a death! Ouch! the brute water . . . Caramba! Alto-
gether improper for a man who has escaped from a great many
battles and the winter of Russia. . . . The snow, sefior. . . .”

He drowsed, garrulous, with the blackened end of his cigarette
hanging from his lower lip, swayed sideways—and let himself go
over gently, pillowing his head on the stump of his arm. ‘The
thin, viperish blade, stuck upwards from under his temple, gleamed
red before the sinking fire.

I raised a handful of flaring twigs to look at Seraphina. A
terrible night raged over the land; the inner arch of the opening
growled, winking bluishly time after time, and, like an enchanted
princess enveloped in a beggar’s cloak, she was lying profoundly
asleep in the heart of her dominions.

CHAPTER VIII

HE first thing I noted, on opening my eyes, was that

Castro had gone already; I was annoyed. He might

have called me. However, we had arranged everything
the evening before. The broad day, penetrating through the pas-
sage, diffused a semicircle of twilight over the flooring. It
extended as far as the emplacement of the fire, black and cold
now with a gray heap of ashes in the middle. Farther away in the
darkness, beyond the reach of light, Seraphina on her bed of
leaves did not stir. But what was that hat doing there? Castro’s
hat. It asserted its existence more than it ever did on the head of
its master; black and rusty, like a battered cone of iron, reposing
on a wide flange near the ashes. “Then he was not gone. He
would not start to walk three leagues, bare-headed. He would
appear presently; and I waited, vexed at the loss of time. But he
did not appear. ‘‘ Castro,” I cried in an undertone. ‘The leaves
rustled ; Seraphina sat up.

We were pleased to be with each other in an inexpugnable re-
treat, to hear our voices untinged by anxiety; and, going to the
outer end of the short passage, we breathed with joy the pure air.
The tops of the bushes below glittered with drops of rain, the sky
was clear, and the sun, to us invisible, struck full upon the face
of the rock on the other side of the ravine. A great bird soared,
all was light and silence, and we forgot Castro for a time. I
threw my legs over the sill, and sitting on the stone surveyed the
cornice. ‘The bright day robbed the ravine of half its horrors. .
The path was rather broad, if there was a frightful sheer drop of
ninety feet at least. TWo men could have walked abreast on that
ledge, and with a hand-rail one would have thought nothing of
it. The most dangerous part yet was at the entrance, where it
ended in a rounded projection not quite so wide as the rest. I
bantered Seraphina as to going out. She said she was ready. She
would shut her eyes, and take hold of my hand. Englishmen, she

292

PART FOURTH 293

had heard, were good at climbing. ‘Their heads were steady.
Then we became silent. There were no signs of Castro. Where
could he have gone? What could he be doing? It was un-
‘imaginable.

I grew nervous with anxiety at last, and begged Seraphina to go
in. She obeyed without a word, and I remained just within the
entrance, watching. I had no means to tell the time, but it seemed
to me that an hour or two passed. Hadn’t we better, I thought,
start at once on foot for the hacienda? I did not know the way,
but by descending the ravine again to the sea, and walking along
the bank of the little river, I was sure to reach it. The objection
to this was that we should miss Castro. Hang Castro! And yet
there was something mysterious and threatening in his absence.
Could he—could he have stepped out for some reason in the dark,
perhaps, and tumbled off the cornice? I had seen no traces of a
slip—there would be none on the rock; the twigs of the growth
below the edge would spring back, of course. But why should he
fall? The footing was good—however, a sudden attack of ver-
tigo. . . . I tried to look at it from every side. He was not a
somnambulist, as far as I knew. And there was nothing to eat
—I felt hungry already—or drink. The want of water would
drive us out very soon to the spring bubbling out at the head of
the ravine, a mile in the open. Then why not go at once, drink,
and return to our lair as quickly as possible.

But I did not like to think of her going up and down the cor-
nice. I remembered that we had a flask, and went in hastily to
look for it. First, I looked near the hat; then, Seraphina and I,
bent double with our eyes on the ground, examined every square
inch of twilight; we even wandered a long way into the darkness,
feeling about with our hands. It was useless! I called out to
her, and then we desisted, and coming together, wondered what
might have become of the thing. He had taken it—that was
clear.

But if, as one might suppose, he had taken it away to get some
water for us, he ought to have been back long before. I was be-
ginning to feel rather alarmed, and I tried to consider what we
had better do. It was necessary to learn, first, what had become
of him. Staring out of the opening, in my perplexity, I saw, on

294 ROMANCE

the other side of the ravine, the lower part of a man from his
waist to his feet.

By crouching down at once, I brought his head into view. This
was not Castro. He wore a black sombrero, and on his shoulder
carried a gun. He turned his back on the ravine, and began to
walk straight away, sinking from my sight till only his hat and
shoulders remained visible. He lifted his arm then—straight up
—evidently as a signal, and waited. Presently another head and
shoulders joined him, and they glided across my line of sight to-
gether. But I had recognized their bandit-like aspect with infinite
consternation. Lugarefios!

I caught Seraphina’s hand. My first thought was that we
should have to steal out of the cavern with the first coming of
darkness. Castro must be lying low in hiding somewhere above.
The thing was plain. We must try to make our way to the
hacienda under the cover of the night, unseen by those two men.
Evidently they were emissaries sent from Rio Medio to watch
this part of the coast against our possible landing. I was to be
hunted down, it seems: and I reproached myself bitterly with the
hardships I was bringing upon her continually. Thinking of the
fatigues she had undergone—(I did not think of dangers—that
was another thing—the romance of dying together like all the
lovers in the tradition of the world)—I shook with rage and
exasperation. ‘The firm pressure of her hands calmed me. She
was content. But what if they took it into their heads to come
into the cavern?

The emptiness of the blue sky above the sheer yellow rock oppo-
site was frightful. It was a mere strip, stretched like a luminous
bandage over our eyes. They were, perhaps, even now on their
way round the head of the ravine. I had no weapon except the
butt of my pistol. ‘The charges had been spoilt by the salt water,
of course, and I had been tempted to fling it out of my belt, but
for the thought of obtaining some powder somewhere. And those
men I had seen were armed. At once we abandoned the neigh-
borhood of the entrance, plunging straight away into the profound
obscurity of the cave. ‘The rocky ground under our feet had a
gentle slope, then dipped so sharply as to surprise us; and the
entrance, diminishing at our backs, shone at last no larger than the’

PART FOURTH 295

entrance of a mouse-hole. We made a few steps more, gropingly.
The bead of light disappeared altogether when we sat down, and
we remained there hand-in-hand and silent, like two frightened
children placed at the center of the earth. There was not a sound,
not a gleam. Seraphina bore the crushing strain of this perfect
and black stillness in an almost heroic immobility; but, as to me,
it seemed to lie upon my limbs, to embarrass my breathing like a
numbness full of dread; and to shake that feeling off I jumped up
repeatedly to look at that luminous bead, that point of light
no bigger than a pearl in the infinity of darkness. And once, just
as I was looking, it shut and opened at me slowly, like the deliber-
ate drooping and rising of the lid upon a white eyeball.
Somebody had come in.
We watched side by side. Only one. Would he go out? The
‘ point of light, like a white star setting in a coal-black firmament,
remained uneclipsed. Whoever had entered was in no haste to
leave. Moreover, we had no means of telling what another ob-
scuring of the light might mean; a departure or another arrival.
’ ‘There were two men about, as we knew; and it was even possible
that they had entered together in one wink of the light, treading
close upon each other’s heels. We both felt the sudden great desire
to know for certain. But, especially, we needed to find out if
perchance this was not Castro who had returned. We could not
afford to lose his assistance. And should he conclude we were out
—should he risk himself outside again, in order to find us and be
discovered himself, and thus lost to us when we felt him so neces-
sary? And the doubt came. If this man was Castro, why
didn’t he penetrate further, and shout our names? He ought to
have been intelligent enough to guess. . . . And it was this
doubt that, making suspense intolerable, put us in motion.

We circled widely in that subterranean darkness, which, unlike
the darkest night on the surface of the earth, had no suggestion
of shape, no horizon, and seemed to have no more limit than the
darkness of infinite space. On this floor of solid rock we moved
with noiseless steps, like a pair of timid phantoms. ‘The spot of
light grew in size, developed a shape—stretching from a pearly
bead to a silvery thread; and, approaching from the side, we
scanned from afar the circumscribed region of twilight about the

296 ROMANCE

opening. There was a man in it. We contemplated for a time
his rounded back, his drooping head. It was gray. The man was
Castro. He sat rocking himself sorrowfully over the ashes. He
~was mourning for us. We were touched by this silent faithfulness
of grief.

He started when I put my hand on his shoulder, looked
up, then, instead of giving any signs of joy, dropped his head
again.

“You managed to avoid them, Castro?” I said.

“ Seftor, behold. Here I am. I, Castro.”

His tone was gloomy, and after sitting still for a while under
our gaze, he slapped his forehead violently. He was in his tan-
trums, I judged, and, as usual, angry with me—the cause of every
misfortune. He was upset and annoyed beyond reason, as I
thought, by this new difficulty. It meant delay—a certain mea-
sure of that sort of danger of which we had thought ourselves free
for a time—night traveling for Seraphina. But I had an idea to
save her this. We did not all want to go. Castro could start,
alone, for the hacienda after dark, and bring, besides the mules,
half a dozen peons with him for an escort. There was nothing
really to get so upset about. “The danger would have been if he
had let himself be caught. But he had not. As to his temper, I
knew my man; he had been amiable too long. But by this time
we were so sure of his truculent devotion that Seraphina spoke
gently to him, saying how anxious we had been—how glad we
were to see him safe with us. . ..

He would not be conciliated easily, it seemed, and let out only
a blood-curdling dismal groan. Without looking at her, he tried
hastily to make a cigarette. He was very clever at it generally,
rolling it with one hand on his knee somehow; but this time all
his limbs seemed to shake, he lost several pinches of tobacco, .
dropped the piece of maize leaf. Seraphina, stooping over his
shoulder, took it up, twisted the thing swiftly.

“Take, amigo,” she said.

He was looking up at her, as if struck dumb, rolling his eye
wildly. He jumped up.

“ You—sefiorita! For a miserable old man! You break my
heart.”

PART FOURTH 297

And with long strides he disappeared in the darkness, leaving
us wondering.
We sat side by side on the couch of leaves. With Castro there

I felt we were quite equal to dealing with the two Lugarefios if

they had the unlucky idea of intruding upon us. Indeed, a vigi-

lant man, posted on one side at the end of the passage, could have
disputed the entrance against ten, twenty, almost any number,
as long as he kept his strength and had something heavy enough to
knock them over. Faint sounds reached me, as if at a great dis-
tance Castro had been shouting to himself. I called to him. He

did not answer, but unexpectedly his short person showed itself

in the brightest part of the light.

“Senor!” he called out with a strange intonation.

I got up and went to him. He seemed to be listening intently
with his ear turned to the opening. ‘Then suddenly:

“Look at me, sefior. Am I Castro—the same Castro? old and
friendless? ”

_ He stood biting his forefinger and looking up at me from under
his knitted eyebrows. I didn’t know what to say. What was this
nonsense ?

He ejaculated a sort of incomprehensible babble, and, passing
by me, rushed towards Seraphina; she sat up, startled, on her
couch of leaves. Falling before her on his plump knees, he seized
her hand, pressed it against his ragged mustache.

“ Excellency, forgive me! No—no forgiveness! Ha! old man!
Ha—thou old man. .. .”

He bowed before her shadowy figure, that sustained the pale
oval of the face, till his forehead struck the rock. Plunging his
hand into the ashes, he poured a fistful with inarticulate low cries
over his gray hairs; and the agitation of that obese little body
on its knees had a lamentable and grotesque inconsequence, as
inexplicable in itself as the sorrow of a madman. Full of wonder
before his abject collapse, she murmured:

“What have you done?”

He tried to fling himself upon her feet, but my hand was in

‘his collar, and after an unmerciful shaking, I sat him down by
main force. He gulped, blinked the whites of his eyes, then, in
a whisper full of rage:

298 ROMANCE

‘Horror, shame, misery, and malediction; I have betrayed
you.” , :

At once she said soothingly, “‘ Tomas, I do not believe this’’;
while I thought to myself: How? Why? For what reason?
In what manner betrayed? How was it possible? And, if so,
why did he come back to us? But, as things stood, he would
never dare approach a Lugarefio. If he had, they would never
have let him go again.

“You told them we were here?” I asked, so perfectly incredu-
lous that I was not at all surprised to hear him protest, by all the
saints, that he never did—never would do. Never. Never... . —
But why should he? Was he the prey of some strange hallucina-
tion? Rocking himself, he struck his breast with his clenched
hand, then suddenly caught at his hair and remained perfectly
motionless. Minutes passed; this despairing stillness inspired in
me a feeling of awe at last—the awe of something inconceivable.
My head buzzed so with the effort to think that I had the illusions
of faint murmurs in the cave, the very shadows of murmurs. And
all at once a real voice—his voice—burst out fearfully rapid and
voluble.

He had really gone out to get a provision of water. Waking
up early, he saw us sleeping, and felt a great pity for the sefiorita.
As to the caballero—his savior from drowning, alas! — the
sefiorita would need every ounce of his strength. He would let
us sleep till his return from the spring; and, there being a blessed
freshness in the air, he caught up the flask and started bare-headed.
The sun had just risen. Would to God he had never seen it!
After plunging his face in the running water, he remained on his
knees and busied himself in rinsing and filling the flask. The
torrent, gushing with force, made a loud noise, and after he had
done screwing the top on, he was about to rise, when, glanc-.
ing about carelessly, he saw two men leaning on their escopetas
and looking at him in perfect silence. They were standing
right over him; he knew them well; one they called El Rubio;
the other, the little one, was José—squinting José. They said
nothing; nothing at all. With a sudden and mighty effort he
preserved his self-command, affected unconcern and, instead of
getting up, orily shifted his pose to a sitting position, took off his

PART FOURTH 299

shoes and stockings, and proceeded to bathe his feet. But it was
as if a blazing fire had been kindled in his breast, and a tornado
had been blowing in his head.

He could not tell whence these two had come, with what object,

or how much they knew. They might have been only messengers

KM

from Rio Medio to Havana. They generally went in couples.
If Manuel had escaped alive out of the sea, everything was known
in Rio Medio. From where he sat he beheld the empty, open
sea over the dunes, but the edge of the upland, cleft by many
ravines (of which the one we had ascended was the deepest), con-
cealed from him the little basin and the inlet. He was certain
these men had not come up that way. ‘They had approached him
over the plain. But there was more than one way by which the
upland could be reached from below. ‘The thoughts rushed round
and round his head. He remembered that our boat must be float-
ing or lying stranded in the little bay, and resolved, in case of
necessity, to say that we two were dead, that we had been
drowned.

It was El Rubio who put the very question to him, in an insolent
tone, and sitting on the ground out of his reach, with his gun
across his knees. His long knife ready in his hand, squinting José
remained standing over Castro. “Those two men nodded to each
other significantly at the intelligence. He perceived that they
were more than half disposed to credit his story. They had nearly
been drowned themselves pursuing that accursed heretic of an
Englishman. When, from their remarks, he learned that the
schooner was in the bay, he began putting on his shoes, though the
hope of making a sudden dash for his life down the ravine aban-
doned him.

The schooner had been run in at night during the gale, and in
such distress that they let her take the ground. She was not
injured, however, and some of them were preparing to haul her
off. Our boat, as I conceive, after bumping along the beach, had

_drifted within the influence of the current created by the little

river, or else by the water forced into the basin by the tempest,
seeking to escape, and had been carried out towards the inlet.
She was seen at daylight, knocking about amongst the breakers,
bottom up, and in such shallow water that three or four men

300 ROMANCE

wading out knee-deep managed to turn her over. They had found
Mrs. Williams’ woolen shawl and my cap floating underneath.
At the same time the broken mast and sail were made out, tossing
upon the waves, not very far off to seaward. ‘That the boat had
been in the bay at all did not seem to have occurred to them. It
had been concluded that she had capsized outside the entrance.
It was very possible that we had been drowned under her. Castro
hastened to confirm the idea by relating how he had been clinging
to the bottom of the boat for a long time. ‘Thus he had saved
himself, he declared.

“Manuel will be glad,” observed El Rubio then, with an evil
laugh. And for a long time nobody said a word.

El Rubio, cross-legged, was observing him with the eyes of a
basilisk, but Castro swore a great oath that, as to himself, he
showed no signs of fear. He looked at the water gushing from
the rock, bubbling up, sparkling, running away in a succession of
tiny leaps and falls.) Why should he fear? Was he not old, and
tired, and without any hope of peace on earth? What was death?
Nothing. It was absolutely nothing. It comes to all. It was
rest after much vain trouble—and he trusted that, through his
devotion to the Mother of God, his sins would be forgiven after
a short time in purgatory. But, as he had made up his mind not
to fall into Manuel’s hands, he resolved that presently he would
stab himself to the heart, where he sat—over this running water.
For it would not be like a suicide. He was doomed, and surely
God did not want his body to be tormented by such a devil as
Manuel before death. He would lean far over before he struck
his faithful blade into his breast, so as to fall with his face in the
water. It looked deliciously cool, and the sun was heavy on his
bare head. Suddenly, El Rubio sprang to his feet, saying:

“ Now, José.”

It is clear that these ruffians stood in awe of his blade. In
their cowardly hearts they did not think it quite safe (being
only two to one) to try and disarm that old man. “They backed
away a step or two, and, leveling their pieces, suddenly ordered
him to get up and walk before. He threw at them an obscene
word. He thought to himself, “ Bueno! They will blow my
head off my shoulders.” No emotion stirred in him, as if his blood

PART FOURTH 301

_ had already ceased to run in his veins. ‘They remained, all three,
in a state of suspended animation, but at last El Rubio hissed
through his teeth with vexation, and grunted:

“ Attention, José. “Take aim. We will break his legs and
take away the sting of this old scorpion.”

Castro’s blood felt chilly in his limbs, but, instead of planting
his knife in his breast, he spoke up to ask them where, supposing
he consented, they wished to conduct. him.

“To Manuel—our captain. He would like to embrace you
before you die,” said El] Rubio, advancing a stride nearer, his gun
to his shoulder. ‘‘Get up! March!”

And Castro found himself on his feet, looking straight into the
black holes of the barrels.

“Walk!” they exclaimed together, stepping upon him.

‘The time had come to die.

“Ha! Canalla!”’ he said.

They made a menacing clamor, “ Walk viejo, traitor; walk.”

“ Sefiorita—I walked.” ‘The heartrending effort of the voice,
the trembling of this gray head, the sobs under the words, op-
pressed our breast with dismay and dread. Ardently he would
have us believe that at this juncture he was thinking of us only—
of us wondering, alone, ignorant of danger, and hidden blindly
under the earth. His purpose was to provoke the two Lugarejios
to shoot, so that we should be warned by the reports. Besides, an
opportunity for escape might yet present itself in some most un-
likely way, perhaps at the very last moment. Had he not his
own life in his own hands? He cared not for it. It was in his
power to end it at any time. And there would be dense thickets
on the way; long grass where one could plunge suddenly—who
knows! And overgrown ravines where one could hide—creep

under the bushes—escape—and return with help. . . . But when
he faced the plain its greatness crushed his poor strength. ‘The
uncovered vastness imprisoned him as effectually as a wall. He
knew himself for what he was: an old man, short of breath, heavy
of foot; nevertheless he walked on hastily, his eyes on the ground.
The footsteps of his captors sounded behind him, and he tried to
edge towards the ravine. When nearly above the opening of the
cavern he would, he thought, swerve inland, and dash off as fast

302 ROMANCE

as he was able. Then they would have to fire at him; we would
be sure to hear the shots, the warning would be clear . . . and
suddenly, looking up, he saw that a small band of Lugarefos,
having just ascended the brow of the upland, were coming to meet
him. Now was the time to get shot; he turned sharply, and began
to run over that great plain towards a distant clump of trees.

Nobody fired at him. He heard only the mingled jeers
and shouts of the two men behind, “‘ Quicker, Castro; quicker!”
They followed him, holding their sides. “Those ahead had already
spread themselves out over the plain, yelling to each other, and
were converging upon him. ‘That was the time to stop, and
with one blow fall dead at their feet. He doubled round in front
of Manuel, who stood waving his arms and screeching orders, and
ran back towards the ravine. The plain rang with furious shouts.
They rushed at him from every side. He would throw himself
over. It was a race for the precipice. He won it.

I suppose he found it not so easy to die, to part with the warmth
of sunshine, the taste of food; to break that material servitude to
life, contemptible as a vice, that binds us about like a chain on
the limbs of hopeless slaves. He showered blows upon his chest;
sitting before us, he battered with his fist at the side of his head
till I caught his arm. We could always sell our lives dearly, I
said. He would have to defend the entrance with me. We two
could hold it till it was blocked with their corpses.

He jumped up with a derisive shriek; a cloud of ashes flew
from under his stumble, and he vanished in the darkness with mad
gesticulations.

“Their corpses—their corpses—their . . . Ha! ha! ha!”

The snarling sound died away; and I understood, then, what
meant this illusion of ghostly murmurs that once or twice had
seemed to tremble in the narrow region of gray light around the ©
arch. The sunshine of the earth, and the voices of men, expired
on the threshold of the eternal obscurity and stillness in which we
were imprisoned, as if in a grave with inexorable death standing
between us and the free spaces of the world.

CHAPTER IX

OR it meant that. Imprisoned! Castro’s derisive shriek

meant that. And I had known it before. He emerged back

out of the black depths, with livid, swollen features, and
foam about his mouth, to splutter:

“Their corpses, you say. . . . Ha! Our corpses,” and re-
treated again, where I could only hear incoherent mutters.

Seraphina clutched my arm. ‘‘ Juan—together—no separa-
tion.”

I had known it, even as I spoke of selling our lives dearly.
‘They could only be surrendered. Surrendered miserably to these
wretches, or to the everlasting darkness in which Castro muttered
’ his despair. I needed not to hear this ominous and sinister sound
—nor yet Seraphina’s cry. She understood, too. They would
never come down unless to look upon us when we were dead. I
need not have gone to the entrance of the cave to understand all
the horror of our fate. The Lugarefos had already lighted a fire.
Very near the brink, too.

It was burning some thirty feet above my head; and the sheer
wall on the other side caught up and sent across into my face the
crackling of dry branches, the loud excited talking, the arguments,
the oaths, the laughter ; now and then a very shriek of joy. Manuel
was giving orders. Some advanced the opinion that the cursed
Inglez, the spy who came from Jamaica to see whom he could get
for a hanging without a priest, was down there, too. So that
was it! O’Brien knew how to stir their hate. I should get a
short shrift. “‘ He was a fiend, the Imglez: look how many of us
he has killed!” they cried; and Manuel would have loved to cut
my flesh, in small pieces, off my bones—only, alas! I was now
beyond his vengeance, he feared. However, somebody was left.

He must have thrown himself flat, with his head over the brink,
for his yell of ‘‘ Castro!” exploded, and rolled heavily between the
rocks,

303

304 ROMANCE

“Castro! Castro! Castro!” he shouted twenty times, till he
set the whole ravine in an uproar. He waited, and when the
clamor had quieted down amongst the bushes below, called out
softly, ‘‘Do you hear me, Castro, my victim? ‘Thou art my
victim, Castro.”

Castro had crept into the passage after me. He pushed his head
beyond my shoulder.

“IT defy thee, Manuel,” he screamed.

A hubbub arose. ‘“ He’s there! He is there!”

“ Bravo, Castro,” Manuel shouted from above. “TI love thee
because thou art my victim. I shall sing a song for thee. Come
up. Hey! Castro! Castro! Come up. . . . No? ‘Then the
dead to their grave, and the living to their feast.”

Sometimes a little earth, detached from the layer of soil cover-
ing the rock, would fall streaming from above. The men told off
to guard the cornice walked to and fro near the edge, and the
confused murmur of voices hung subdued in the air of the cleft,
like a modulated tremor. Castro, moaning gently, stumbled back
into the cave.

Seraphina had remained sitting on the stone seat. The twi-
light rested on her knees, on her face, on the heap of cold ashes
at her feet. But Castro, who had stood stock-still, with a hand
to his forehead, turned to me excitedly:

“The peons, por Dios!” Had I ever thought of the peons
belonging to the estancia?

Well, that was a hope. I did not know exactly how matters
stood between them and the Lugarefios. ‘There was no love lost.
A fight was likely; but, even if no actual collision took place, they
would be sure to visit the camp above in no very friendly spirit;
a chance might offer to make our position known to these men,
who had no reason to hate either me or Castro—and would not be
afraid of thwarting the miserable band of ghouls sitting above
our grave. How our presence could be made known I was not
sure. Perhaps simply by shouting with all our might from the
mouth of the cave. We could offer rewards—say who we were,
summon them for the service of their own sefiorita. But, prob-
ably, they had never heard of her. No matter. The news would
soon reach the hacienda, and Enrico had two hundred slaves at his

PART FOURTH 305

back. One of us must always remain at the mouth of the cave
listening to what went on above. There would be the trampling
of horses’ hoofs—quarreling, no doubt—anyway, much talk—
new voices—something to inform us. Only, how soon would
they come? They were not likely to be riding where there were
_no cattle. Had Castro seen any signs of a herd on the uplands
near by?

His face fell. He had not. There were many savannas within
the belt of forests, and the herds might be miles away, stampeded
inland by the storm. Sitting down suddenly, as if overcome, he
averted his eyes and began to scratch the rock between his legs
with the point of his blade.

We were all silent. How long could we wait? How long
could people live? . . . I looked at Seraphina. How long could
she live? . . . The thought seared my heart like a hot iron.
I wrung my hands stealthily.

“ Ha! my blade!” muttered Castro. “ My sting. . . . Old
_ scorpion! ‘They did not take my sting away. . . . Only—bah!”

He, a man, had not risen to the fortitude of a venomous
creature. He was defeated. He groaned profoundly. Life was
too much. It clung to one. A scorpion—an insect—within a
ring of flames, would lift its sting and stab venom into its own
head. And he—Castro—a man—a man, por Dios—had less firm-
ness than a creeping thing. 'Why—why, did he not stab this
dishonored old heart?

“ Sefiorita,” he cried agonizingly, “I swear I did shout to them
to fire—so—into my breast—and then. . . .”

Seraphina leaned over him pityingly.

“Enough, Castro. One lives because of hope. And grieve
not. Thy death would have done no good.”

Her face had a splendid pallor, the radiant whiteness and
majesty of marble; it had never before appeared to me more
beautiful: and her hair unrolling its dark undulations, as if tinged
deep with the funereal gloom of the background, covered her
magnificently right down to her elbows. Her eyes were incredibly
profound. Her person had taken on an indefinable beauty, a new
beauty, that, like the comeliness that comes from joy, love, or
success, seemed to rise from the depths of her being, as if an

306 ROMANCE

unsuspected and somber quality of her soul had responded to the
horror of our situation. ‘The fierce trials had gradually developed
her, as burning sunshine opens the bud of a flower; and I beheld
her_now in the plenitude of her nature. From time to time Castro
would raise up to her his blinking old eyes, full of timidity and
distress.

He had not been young enough to throw himself over—he had
worn the chain for too many years, had lived well and softly too
long, was too old a slave. And yet—if he had had the courage of
the act! Who knows? I rejected the thought far from me. It
returned, and I caught myself looking at him with irritated eyes.
But this first day passed not intolerably. We ignored our suffer-
ings. Indeed, I felt none for my part. We had kept our thoughts
bound to the slow blank minutes. And if we exchanged a few
words now and then, it was to speak of patience, of resolution to
endure and to hope.

At night, from the hot ravine full of shadows, came the cool
fretting of the stream. ‘The big blaze they kept up above crackled
distinctly, throwing a fiery, restless stain on the face of the rock
in front of the cave, high up under the darkness and the stars of
the sky—and a pair of feet would appear stamping, the shadow
of a pair of ankles and feet, fantastic, sustaining no gigantic body,
but enormous, tramping slowly, resembling two coffins leaping to
a slow measure. I see them in my dreams now, sometimes. They
disappeared.

Manuel would sing; far in the night the monotonous staccato
of the guitar went on, accompanying plaintive murmurs, outbursts
of anger and cries of pain, the tremulous moans of sorrow. My
nerves vibrated, I broke my nails on the rock, and seemed to hear
once more the parody of all the transports and of every anguish,
even to death—a tragic and ignoble rendering of life. He was a
true artist, powerful and scorned, admired with derision, obeyed
with jeers. It was a song of mourning; he sat on the brink with
his feet dangling over the precipice that sent him back his inspired
tones with a confused noise of sobs and desolation. . . . His
idol had been snatched from the humility of his adoring silence,
like a falling star from the sight of the worm that crawls. . . .
He stormed on the strings; and his voice emerged like the crying

PART FOURTH 307

of a castaway in the tumult of the gale. He apostrophized his
instrument. . . . Woe! Woe! No more songs. He would
break it. Its work was done. He would dash it against the
rock. . . . His palm slapped the hollow wood furiously. . . .
So that it should lie shattered and mute like his own heart!

A frenzied explosion of yells, jests, and applause covered the
finale.

A complete silence would follow, as if in the acclamations they
had exhausted at once every bestial sound. Somebody would’
cough pitifully for a long time—and when he had done splutter-
ing and cursing, the world outside appeared lost in an even more
profound stillness. The red stain of the fire wavered across to
play under the dark brow of the rock. The irritated murmur
of the torrent, tearing along below, returned timidly at first,
expanded, filled the ravine, ran through my ears in an angry
babble. The deadened footfalls on the brink sometimes dislodged
a pebble: it would start with a feeble rattle and be heard no more.

In the daytime, too, there were silences up there, perfect, pro-
found. No prowl of feet disturbed them; the sun blazed between
the rocks, and even the hum of insects could be heard. It seemed
impossible not ,to believe that they had all died by a miracle, or
else had been driven away by a silent panic. But two or more
were always on the watch, directly above, with their heads over
the edge; and suddenly they would begin to talk together in
drowsy tones. It was as if some barbarous somnambulists had
mumbled in the daytime the bizarre atrocity of their thoughts.

They discussed Williams’ flask, which had been picked up.
Was the cup made of silver, they wondered. Manuel had appro-
priated it for his own use, it seems. Well—he was the capataz.
The Inglez, should he appear by an impossible chance, was to be
shot down at once; but Castro must be allowed to give himself up.
And they would snigger ferociously. Sometimes quarrels arose,
very noisy, a great hubbub of bickerings touching their jealousies,
their fears, their unspeakable hopes of murder and rapine. They
did not feel very safe where they were. Some would maintain that
Castro could not have saved himself, alone. The Inglez was
there, and even the sefiorita herself. . . . Manuel scouted the
idea with contempt. He advanced the violence of the storm, the

308 ROMANCE

fury of the waves, the broken mast, the position of the boat.
How could they expect a woman! . . . No. It was as his song
had it. And he defended his point of view angrily, as though he |
could not bear being robbed of that source of poetical inspiration.
He emitted profound sighs and superb declamations.

Castro and I listened to them at the mouth of the cave. Our
tongues were dry and swollen in our mouths, there was the pres-
sure of an iron clutch on our windpipes, fire in our throats, and the
pangs of hunger that tore at us like iron pincers. But we could
hear that the bandits above were anxious to be gone; they had but
very few charges for their guns, and it was apparent that they
were afraid of a collision with the peons of the hacienda. Glaring
at each other with bloodshot, uncertain eyes, Castro and I imagined
longingly a vision of men in ponchos spurring madly out of the
woods, bent low, and swinging riatas over the necks of their
horses—with the thunder of the galloping hoofs in the cave.
Seraphina had withdrawn further into the darkness. And, with
a shrinking fear, I would join her, to eat my heart out by the side
of her tense and mute contemplation.

Sometimes Manuel would begin again, ‘Castro! Castro!
Castro!” till he seemed to stagger the rocks and disturb the placid
sunshine with an immense wave of sound. He called upon his
victim to drink once more before he died. Long shrieks of derision
rent the air, as if torn out of his breast by far greater torments
than any his fancy delighted to invent. “There was something
terrible and weird in the abundance of words screeched continu-
ously, without end, as if in desperation. No wonder Castro fled
from the passage. And Seraphina and I, within, would be startled
out of our half-delirious state by the sudden appearance of that
old man, disordered, sordid, with a white beard sprouting, who
wandered, weeping aloud in the twilight.

More than once I would stagger off far away into the depths
of the cavern in an access of rage, fling myself on the floor, bite
my arms, beat my head on the rock. I would give myself up. -
She must be saved from this tortured death. She had said she
would throw herself over if I left her. But would she have the
strength? It was impossible to know. For days it seemed she
had been lying perfectly still, on her side, one hand under her wan

PART FOURTH 309

cheek, and only answering “‘ Juan” when I pronounced her name.
There was something awful in our dry whispers. “They were life-
less, like the tones of the dead, if the dead ever speak to each other
across the earth separating the graves. The moral suffering, joined
to the physical torture of hunger and thirst, annihilated my will in
a measure, but also kindled a vague, gnawing feeling of hostility
against her. She asked too much of me. It was too much. And
I would drag myself back to sit for hours, and with an aching
heart look towards her couch from a distance.

My eyes, accustomed to obscurity, traced an indistinct and
recumbent form. Her forehead was white; her hair merged into
the darkness which was gathering slowly upon her eyes, her cheeks,
her throat. She was perfectly still. It was cruel, it was odious,
it was intolerable to be so still. This must end. I would carry
her out by main force. She said no word, but there was in the
embrace of those arms instantly thrown around my neck, in the
feel of those dry lips pressed upon mine, in the emaciated face,
in the big shining eyes of that being as light as a feather, a passion-
' ate mournfulness of seduction, a tenacious clinging to the ap-
pointed fate, that suddenly overawed my movement of rage. I
laid her down again, and covered my face with my hands. She
called out to Castro. He reeled, as if drunk, and waited at the
head of her couch, with his chin dropped on his breast.

“ Vuestra Seforia,’ he muttered.

“ Listen well, Castro.” Her voice was very faint, and each
word came alone, as if shrunk and parched. “Can my gold—
the promise of much gold—you know these men—save the
Liveeces 1.2!”

He uttered a choked cry, and began to tremble, groping for her
hand.

“ 8i, sefiorita. Excellency, si. It would. Mercy. Save me.
I am too old to bear this. Gold, yes; much gold. Manuel... .”

“ Listen, Castro. . ... And Don Juan?”

His head fell again.

“ Speak the truth, Castro.”

He struggled with himself; then, rattling in his throat, shrieked
“No!” with a terrible effort. ‘“‘ No. Nothing can save thy
English lover.”

310 ROMANCE

“Why?” she breathed feebly.

He raged at her in his weakness). Why? Because the order
had gone forth; because they dared not disobey. Because she had
only gold in the palm of her hand, while Sefior O’Brien held all
their lives in his. The accursed Juez was for them like death
itself that walks amongst men, taking this one, leaving another.
He was their life, and their law, and their safety, and their death
—and the caballero had not killed him. .. .

His voice seemed to wither and dry up gradually in his throat.
He crawled away, and we heard him chuckling horribly some-
where, like a madman. Seraphina stretched out her hand.

“Then, Juan—why not together—like this? ”

If she had the courage of this death, I must have even more.
It was a point of honor. I had no wish, and no right, to seek for
some easier way out of life. But she had a woman’s capacity for
passive endurance, a serenity of mind in this martyrdom confessing
to something sinister in the power of love that, like faith, can move
mountains and order cruel sacrifices. She could have walked out
in perfect safety—and it was that thought that maddened me.
And there was no sleep; there were only intervals in which I
could fall into a delirious reverie of still lakes, of vast sheets of
water.- I waded into them up to my lips. Never further. They
were smooth and cold as ice; I stood in them shivering and strain-
ing for a draught, burning within with the fire of thirst, while a
phantom all pale, and with its hair streaming, called to me
“Courage” from the brink in Seraphina’s voice. As to Castro,
he was going mad. He was simply going mad, as people go mad
for want of food and drink. And yet he seemed to keep his
strength. He was never still. It was a factitious strength, the
restlessness of incipient insanity. Once, while I was trying to talk
with him about our only hope—the peons—he gave me a look of
such somber distraction that I left off, intimidated, to wonder
vaguely at this glimpse of something hidden and excessive spring-
ing from torments which surely could be no greater than mine.

He had the strength, and sometimes he could find the voice, to
hurl abuse, curses, and imprecations from the mouth of the cave.
Great shouts of laughter exploded above, and they seemed to hold
their breath to hear more; or Manuel, hanging over, would

PART FOURTH 311

praise in mocking, mellifluous accents the energy of his denunci-
ations. I tried to pull him away from there, but he turned upon
me fiercely; and from prudence—for all hope was not dead in me
yet—I left him alone.

That night I heard him make an extraordinary sound of chew-
ing; at the same time he was sobbing and cursing stealthily. He
had found something to eat, then! I could not believe my ears,
but I began to creep towards the sound, and suddenly there was a
short, mad scuffle in the darkness, during which I nearly spitted
myself on his blade. At last, trembling in every limb, with my
blood beating furiously in my ears, I scrambled to my feet, holding
a small piece of meat in my hands. Instantly, without hesitating,
without thinking, I plunged my teeth into it only to fling it far
away from me with a frantic execration. This was the first
sound uttered since we had grappled. Lying prone near me,
Castro, with a rattle in his throat, tried to laugh.

This was a supreme touch of Manuel’s art; they were pressed
for time, and he had hit upon that deep and politic invention to
hasten the surrender of his beloved victim. I nearly cried with
the fiery pain on my cracked lips. “That piece of half-putrid flesh
was salt—horribly salt—salt like salt itself. Whenever they
heard him rave and mutter at the mouth of the cave, they would
throw down these prepared scraps. It was as if I had put a live
coal into my mouth.

“Ha!” he croaked feebly. ‘“‘ Have you thrown it away? I,
too; the first piece. No matter. I can no more swallow anything,
now.”

His voice was like the rustling of parchment at my feet.

“Do not look for it, Don Juan. The sinners in hell. . . .
Ha! Fiend. I could not resist.”

I sank down by his side. He seemed to be writhing on the
floor muttering, ‘‘ Thirst—thirst—thirst.” His blade clicked on
the rock; then all was still. Was he dead? Suddenly he began
with an amazingly animated utterance.

“Senior! For this they had to kill cattle.”

This thought had kept him up. Probably, they had been firing
shots. But there was a way of hamstringing a stalked cow
silently ; and the plains were vast, the grass on them was long; the

312 ROMANCE

carcasses would lie hidden out of sight; the herds were rounded up
only twice every year. His despairing voice died out in a mourn-
ful fall, and again he was as still as death.

“No! Ican bear this no longer,’ he uttered with force. He
refused to bear it. He suffered too much. There was no hope.
He would overwhelm them with maledictions, and then leap
down from the ledge. “ Adios, senor.”

I stretched out my arm and caught him by the leg. It seemed
to me I could not part with him. It would have been disloyal,
an admission that all was over, the beginning of the end. We
were exhausting ourselves by this sort of imbecile wrestling.
Meantime, I kept on entreating him to be a man; and at last I
managed to clamber upon his chest. ‘‘A man!” he sighed. I
released him. For a space, unheard in the darkness, he seemed to
be collecting all his remaining strength.

“‘ Oh, those strange Inglez! Why should I not leap? and whom
do you love best or hate more, me or the sefiorita? Be thou a
man, also, and pray God to give thee reason to understand men
for once in thy life. Ha! Enamored woman—he is a fool!
Biutel. Castro... a1."

His whispering became appallingly unintelligible, then ceased,
passing into amoan. My will to restrain him abandoned me. He
had brought this on us. And if he really wished to give up the
struggle. .. 5+

“ Sefior,” he mumbled brokenly, ‘a thousand thanks. Br-r-r!
Oh, the ugly water—water—water—water—salt water—salt!
You saved me. Why? Let God be the Judge. I would have
preferred a malignant demon for a friend. I forgive you. Adios!
And—her excellency—poor Castro. . . . Ha! Thou old scor-
pion, encircled by fire—by fire and thirst. No. No scorpion,
alas! Only a man—not like you—therefore—a Mass—or two— .
perhaps... sire.’

The freshness of the night penetrated through the arch, as far
as the faint twilight of the day. I heard his tearful muttering
creep away from my side. ‘ Thirst—thirst—thirst.” I did not
stir; and an incredulity, a weariness, the sense of our common fate,
mingled with an unconfessed desire—the desire of seeing what
would come of it—a desire that stirred my blood like a glimmer of

PART FOURTH 313

hope, and prevented me from making a movement or uttering a
whisper. If his sufferings were so great, who was I to...
Mine, too. I almost envied him. He was free.

As if an inward obscurity had parted in two I looked to the very
bottom of my thoughts. And his action appeared like a sacrifice.
It could liberate us two from this cave before it was too late. He,
he alone, was the prey they had trapped. They would be satisfied,
probably. Nay! There could be no doubt. Directly he was dead
they would depart. Ah! he wanted to leap. He must not be al-
lowed. Now that I had understood perfectly what this meant, I
had to prevent him. ‘There was no choice. I must stop him at
any cost.

The awakening of my conscience sent me to my feet; but before
I had stumbled halfway through the passage I heard his shout in
the open air, ‘‘ Behold me! ”’

A man outside cried excitedly, “ He is out!”

An exulting tumult fell into the arch, the clash of twenty voices
yelling in different keys, ‘‘ He is out—the traitor! He is out!”
I was too late, but I made three more hesitating steps and stood
blinded. The flaming branches they were holding over the preci-
pice showered a multitude of sparks, that fell disappearing
continuously in the lurid light, shutting out the night from the
mouth of the cave. And in this light Castro could be seen kneel-
ing on the other side of the sill.

With his fingers clutching the edge of the slab, he hung out-
wards, his head falling back, his spine arched tensely, like a bow;
and the red sparks coming from above with the dancing whirl of
snowflakes, vanished in the air before they could settle on his face.

“Manuel! Manuel! ” .

They answered with a deep, confused growl, jostling and crowd-
ing on the edge to look down into his eyes. Meantime I stared
at the convulsive heaving of his breast, at his upturned chin, his
swelling throat. He defied Manuel. He would leap. Behold!
he was going to leap—to his own death—in his own time. He
challenged them to come down on the ledge; and the blade of the
maimed arm waved to and fro stiffly, point up, like a red-hot
weapon in the light. He devoted them to pestilence, to English
gallows, to the infernal powers; while all the time the commenting

314 ROMANCE

murmurs passed over his head, as though he had extorted their
sinister appreciation.

“Canalla! dogs, thieves, prey of death, vermin of hell—I spit
on you—like this! ”

He had not the force, nor the saliva, and remained straining
mutely upwards while they laughed at him all together, with some-
thing somber, and as if doomed in their derision. . . . “ He will
jump! No, he will not!” “Yes! Leap, Castro! Spit, ©
Castro!” ‘He will run back into the cave! Maladettal” ...
Manuel’s voiced cooed lovingly on the brink:

“Come to us and drink, Castro.”

I waited for his leap with doubt, with disbelief, in the helpless
agitation of the weak. Gradually he seemed to relax all over.

“ Drink deep; drink, and drink, and drink, Castro. Water.
Clear water, cool water. Taste, Castro!”

He called on him in tones that were almost tender in their
urgency, to come and drink before he died. His voice seemed to
cast a spell, like an incantation, upon the tubby little figure, with
something yearning in the upward turn of the listening face.

“ Drink!” Manuel repeated the word several times; then,
suddenly he called, “Taste, Castro, taste,” and a descending
brightness, as of a crystal rod hurled from above, shivered to
nothing on the upturned face. The light disappearing from before
the cave seemed scared away by the inhuman discord of his shriek;
and I flung myself forward to lick the splash of moisture on the
sill. I did not think of Castro, I had forgotten him. I raged at
the deception of my thirst, exploring with my torgue the rough
surface of the stone till I tasted my own blood. Only then, rais-
ing my head to gasp, and clench my fists with a baffled and exas-
perated desire, I noticed how profound was the silence, in which
the words, “‘ Take away his sting,’ seemed to pronounce them- -
selves over the ravine in the impersonal austerity of the rock, and
with the tone of a tremendous decree.

CHAPTER X

E had surrendered to his thirst. What weakness! He

had not thrown himself over, then. What folly! One

splash of water on his face had been enough. He was
contemptible; and lying collapsed, in a sort of tormented apathy,
at the mouth of the cave, I despised and envied his good fortune.
It could not save him from death, but at least he drank. I under-
stood this when I heard his voice, a voice altogether altered—a
firm, greedy voice saying, “ More,” breathlessly. And then he
drank again. He was drinking. He was drinking up there in the
light of the fire, in a circle of mortal enemies, under Manuel’s
gloating eyes. Drinking! O happiness! O delight! What a
miserable wretch! I clawed the stone convulsively; I think I
would have rushed out for my share if I had not heard Manuel’s
cruel and caressing voice:

“How now? You do not want to throw yourself over, my
Castro?”

“T have drunk,” he said gloomily.

I think they must have given him something to eat then. In
my mind there are many blanks in the vision of that scene, a vision
built upon a few words reaching me, suddenly, with great inter-
vals of silence between, as though I had been coming to myself
out of a dead faint now and then. A ferocious hum of many
voices would rise sometimes impatiently, the scrambling of feet
near the edge; or, in a sinister and expectant stillness, Manuel the
artist would be speaking to his “ beloved victim Castro” in a
gentle and insinuating voice that seemed to tremble slightly with
eagerness. Had he eaten and drunk enough? ‘They had kept
their promises, he said. They would keep them all. The water
had been cool—and presently he, Manuel-del-Popolo, would ac-
company with his guitar and his voice the last moments of his
victim. Bursts of laughter punctuated his banter. Ah! that
Manuel, that Manuel! Some actually swore in admiration. But

315,

316 ROMANCE

was Castro really at his ease? Was it not good to eat and drink?
Had he quite returned to life? But, Caramba, amigos, what
neglect! The caballero who has honored us must smoke. They
shouted in high glee:

“Yes, Smoke, Castro. Let him smoke.” _

I suppose he did; and Manuel expounded to him how pleasant
life was in which one could eat, and drink, and smoke. His words
tortured me. Castro remained mute—from disdain, from despair,
perhaps. Afterwards they carried him along clear of the cornice,
and I understood they formed a half-circle round him, drawing
their knives. Manuel, screeching in a high falsetto, ordered the
bonds of his feet to be cut. I advanced my head out as far as I
dared; their voices reached me deadened; I could only see the pro-
found shadow of the ravine, a patch of dark, clear sky opulent with
stars, and the play of the firelight on the opposite side. ‘The shadow
of a pair of monumental feet, and the lower edge of a cloak,
spread amply like a skirt, stood out in it, intensely black and mo-
tionless, right in front of the cave. Now and then, elbowed in the
surge round Castro, the guitar emitted a deep and hollow reso-
nance. He was tumultuously ordered to stand up and, I imagine,
he was being pricked with the points of their knives till he did
get on his feet. “‘ Jump” they roared all together—and Manuel
began to finger the strings, lifting up his voice between the gusts
of savage hilarity, mingled with cries of death. He exhorted his
followers to close on the traitor inch by inch, presenting their
knives.

“He runs here and there, the blood trickling from his limbs
—but in vain, this is the appointed time for the leap. . . .”

It was an improvisation; they stamped their feet to the slow
measure; they shouted in chorus the one word “ Leap!” raising
a ferocious roar; and between whiles the song of voice and strings
came to me from a distance, softened and lingering in a voluptuous
and pitiless cadence that wrung my heart, and seemed to eat up
the remnants of my strength. But what could I have done, even
if I had had the strength of a giant, and a most fearless resolution ?
I should have been shot dead before I had crawled halfway up the
ledge. A piercing shriek covered the guitar, the song, and the wild
merriment.

PART FOURTH 317

Then everything seemed to stop—even my own painful breath-
ing. Again Castro shrieked like a madman:

“ Sefiorita—your gold. Seforita! Hear me! Help!”

Then all was still.

“ Hear the dead calling to the dead,” sneered Manuel.

An awestruck sort of hum proceeded from the Spaniards. Was
the sefiorita alive? In the cave? Or where?

“Her nod would have saved thee, Castro,” said Manuel slowly.

I got up. I heard Castro stammer wildly:

“She shall fill both your hands with gold. Do you hear,
hombres? I, Castro, tell you—each man—both hands——”

He had done it. The last hope was gone now. And all that
there remained for me to do was to leap over or give myself up,
and end this horrible business.

“ She was a creature born to command the moon and the stars,”
Manuel mused aloud in a vibrating tone, and suddenly smote the
strings with emphatic violence. She could even stay his ven-
geance. But was it possible! No, no. It could not be—and
VEC, wiprepiocie

“Thou art alive yet, Castro,” he cried. “Thou hast eaten
and drunk; life is good—is it not, old man?—and the leap is
high.”

He thundered “ Silence!” to still the excited murmurs of his
band. If she lived Castro should live, too—he, Manuel, said so;
but he threatened him with horrible tortures, with two days of
slow dying, if he dared to deceive. Let him, then, speak the truth
quickly.

“ Speak, viejo. Where is she?”

And at the opening, fifty yards away, I was tempted to call out,
as though I had loved Castro well enough to save him from the
shame and remorse of a plain betrayal. That the moment of it
had come I could have no doubt. And it was I myself, perhaps,
who could not face the certitude of his downfall. If my throat
had not been so compressed, so dry with thirst and choked with
emotion, I believe I should have cried out and brought them away
from that miserable man with a rush. Since we were lost, he
at least should be saved from this. I suffered from his spasmodic,
agonized laugh away there, with twenty knives aimed at his breast

318 ROMANCE

and the eighty-feet drop of the precipice at his back. Why did
he hesitate? ;

I was to learn, then, that the ultimate value of life to all of us
is based on the means of self-deception. Morally he had his back
against the wall, he could not hope to deceive himself; and after
Manuel had cried again at him, “ Where are they?” in a really
terrible tone, I heard his answer:

“ At the bottom of the sea.”

He had his own courage after all—if only the courage not to
believe in Manuel’s promises. And he must have been weary of
his life—weary enough ‘not to pay that price. And yet he had
gone to the very verge, calling upon Seraphina as if she could hear
him. Madness of fear, no doubt—succeeded by an awakening, a
heroic reaction. And yet sometimes it seems to me as if the whole
scene, with his wild cries for help, had been the outcome of a
supreme exercise of cunning. For, indeed, he could not have in-
vented anything better to bring the conviction of our death to the
most skeptical of those rufhans. All I heard after his words had
been a great shout, followed by a sudden and unbroken. silence.
It seemed to last a very long time. He had thrown himself over!
It is like the blank space of a swoon to me, and yet it must have
been real enough, because, huddled up just inside the sill, with my
head reposing wearily on the stone, I watched three moving flames
of lighted branches carried by men follow each other closely in
a swaying descent along the path on the other side of the ravine.
They passed on downwards, flickering out of view. ‘Then, after
a time, a voice below, to the left of the cave, ascended with a
hooting and mournful effect from the depths.

“Manuel! Manuel! We have found him! . . . Es muerte!”

And from above Manuel’s shout rolled, augmented, between
the rocks.

“ Bueno! Turn his face up—for the birds! ”

They continued calling to each other for a good while. The
men below declared their intention of going on to the sea shore;
and Manuel shouted to them not to forget to send him up a good
rope early in the morning. Apparently, the schooner had been
refloated some time before; many of the Lugarefos were to sleep
on board. ‘They purposed to set sail early next day.

PART FOURTH 319

This revived me, and I spent the night between Seraphina’s
couch and the mouth of the cave, keeping tight hold of my reason
that seemed to lose itself in this hope, in this darkness, in this tor-
ment. I touched her cheek, it was hot—while her forehead felt
to my fingers as cold as ice. I had no more voice, but I tried to
force out some harsh whispers through my throat. They sounded
horrible to my own ears, and she endeavored to soothe me by mur-
muring my name feebly. I believe she thought me delirious. I
tried to pray for my strength to last till I could carry her out of
that cave to the side of the brook—then let death come. “ Live,
live,” I whispered into her ear, and would hear a sigh so faint, so
feeble, that it swayed all my soul with pity and fear, ‘“ Yes,
Juan.” . . . And I would go away to watch for the dawn from
the mouth of the cave, and curse the stars that would not fade.

Manuel’s voice always steadied me. A languor had come over
them above, as if their passion had been exhausted; as if their
hearts had been saddened by an unbridled debauch. ‘There was,
however, their everlasting quarreling. Several of them, I under-
stood, left the camp for the schooner, but avoiding the road by the
ravine as if Castro’s dead body down there had made it impassable.
And the talk went on late into the night. ‘There was some super-
stitious fear attached to the cave—a legend of men who had gone
in and had never come back any more. All they knew of it was
the region of twilight; formerly, when they used the shelter of the
cavern, no one, it seems, ever ventured outside the circle of the
fire. Manuel disdained their fears. Had he not been such a pro-
found politico, a man of stratagems, there would have been a
necessity to go down and see. . . . They all protested. Who
was going down? Not they. . .. Their craven cowardice was
amazing.

He begged them to keep themselves quiet. They had him for
Capataz now. A man of intelligence. Had he not enticed Castro
out? He had never believed there was anyone else in there. He
sighed. Otherwise Castro would have tried to save his life by
confessing. There had been nothing to confess. But he had the
means of making sure. A voice suggested that the Inglez might
have withdrawn himself into the depths. These English were not
afraid of demons, being devils themselves; and ‘this one was fiend-

320 ROMANCE

ishly reckless. But Manuel observed, contemptuously, that a
man trapped like this would remain near the opening. Hope
would keep him there till he died—unless he rushed out like
Castro. Manuel laughed, but in a mournful tone: and, listening
to the craven talk of their doubts and fears, it seemed to me that
if I could appear at one bound amongst them, they would scatter
like chaff before my glance. It seemed intolerable to wait; more
than human strength could bear. Would the day never come?
A drowsiness stole upon their voices.

Manuel kept watch. He fed the fire, and his incomplete
shadow, projected across the chasm, would pass and return, ob-
scuring the glow that fell on the rock. His footsteps seemed to
measure the interminable duration of the night. Sometimes he
would stop short and talk to himself in low, exalted mutters. A
big bright star rested on the brow of the rock opposite, shining
straight into my eyes. It sank, as if it had plunged into the stone.
At last. Another came to look into the cavern. I watched the
gradual coming of a gray sheen from the side of Seraphina’s couch.
This was the day, the last day of pain, or else of life. Its ghostly
edge invaded slowly the darkness of the cave towards its appointed
limit, creeping slowly, as colorless as spilt water on the floor. I
pressed my lips silently upon her cheek. Her eyes were open. It
seemed to me she had a smile fainter than her sighs. She was
very brave, but her smile did not go beyond her lips. Not a
feature of her face moved. I could have opened my veins for her
without hesitation, if it had not been a forbidden sacrifice.

Would they go? I asked myself. Through Castro’s heroism
or through his weakness, perhaps through both the heroism and
the weakness of that man, they must be satisfied. They must be.
I could not doubt it; I could not believe it. Everything seemed
improbable; everything seemed possible. If they descended I
would, I thought, have the strength to carry her off, away into the
darkness. If there was any truth in what I had overheard them
saying, that the depths of the cavern concealed an abyss, we would
cast ourselves into it.

The feeble, consenting pressure of her hand horrified me. They
would not come down. They were afraid of that place, I whis-
pered to her—and I thought to myself that such cowardice was

PART FOURTH 321

incredible. Our fate was sealed. And yet from what I had
Heard. .2uig:

We watched the daylight growing in the opening; at any
moment it might have been obscured by their figures. The tor-
menting incertitudes of that hour were cruel enough to overcome,
almost, the sensations of thirst, of hunger, to engender a restless-
ness that had the effect of renewed vigor. ‘They were like a
nightmare; but that nightmare seemed to clear my mind of its
feverish hallucinations. I was more collected, then, than I had
been for the last forty-eight hours of our imprisonment. But J
could not remain there, waiting. It was absolutely necessary that:
I should watch at the entrance for the moment of their depar-
ture.

_ The morning was serenely cool and, in its stillness, their talk
filled with clear-cut words the calm air of the ravine. A party
—I could not tell how many—had already come up from the
schooner in a great state of excitement. ‘They feared that their
presence had, in some way, become known ‘to the peons of the
hacienda. There was much abuse of a man called Carneiro, who,
the day before, had fired an incautious shot at a fat cow on one
of the inland savannas. ‘They cursed him. Last night, before the
moon rose, those on board the schooner had heard the whinnying
of a horse. Somebody had ridden down to the water’s edge in
the darkness and, after waiting a while, had galloped back the
way he came. ‘The prints of hoofs on the beach showed that.

They feared these horsemen greatly. A vengeance was owing
for the man Manuel had killed; and I could guess they talked
with their faces over their shoulders. ‘And what about finding
out whether the Inglez was there, dead or alive?” asked some.

I was sure, now, that they would not come down in a body. It
would expose them to the danger of being caught in the cavern
by the peons. ‘There was no time for a thorough search, they
argued.

For the first time that morning I heard Manuel’s voice, “‘ Stand
aside.”

He came down to the very brink.

“ Tf the Inglez is down there, and if he is alive, he is listening to
us now.”

322 ROMANCE

He was as certain as though he had been able to see me. He
added:

“ But there’s no one.”

“Go and look, Manuel,” they cried.

He said something in a tone of contempt. The voices above
my head sank into busy murmurs.

“Give me the rope here,” he said aloud.

I had a feeling of some inconceivable danger nearing me; and
in my state of weakness I began to tremble, backing away from
the orifice. I had no strength in my limbs. I had no weapons.
How could I fight? I would use my teeth. With a light knock-
ing against the rock above the arch, Williams’ flask, tied by its
green cord to the end of a thick rope, descended slowly, and hung
motionless before the entrance.

It had been freshly filled with water; it was dripping wet out-
side, and the silver top, struck by the sunbeams, dazzled my eyes.

This was the danger—this bait. And it seems to me that if I
had had the slightest inkling of what was coming, I should have
rushed at it instantly. But it took me some time to understand—
to take in the idea that this was water, there, within reach of my
hand. With a great effort I resisted the madness that incited me
to hurl myself upon the flask. I hung back with all my power.
A convulsive spasm contracted my throat. I turned about and
fled out of the passage.

I ran to Seraphina. ‘‘ Put out your hand to me,” I panted in
the darkness. ‘I need your help.”

I felt it resting lightly on my bowed head. She did not even
ask me what I meant; as if the greatness of her soul was
omniscient. ‘There was, in that silence, a supreme unselfishness,
the unquestioning devotion of a woman.

“Patience, patience,” I kept on muttering. I was losing confi-
dence in myself. If only I had been free to dash my head against
the rock. I had the courage for that, yet. But this was a situation
from which there was no issue in death.

“We are saved,” I murmured distractedly,

“ Patience,” she breathed out. Her hand slipped languidly off
my head.

And I began to creep away from her side. I am here to tell

PART FOURTH 323

the truth. I began to creep away towards the flask. I did not
confess this to myself; but I know now. ‘There was a devilish
power in it. I have learned the nature of feelings in a man whom
Satan beguiles into selling his soul—the horror of an irresistible
and fatal longing for a supreme felicity. And in a drink of water
for me, then, there was a greater promise than in universal knowl-
edge, in unbounded power, in unlimited weath, in imperishable
youth. What could have been these seductions to a drink? No
soul had thirsted after things unlawful as my parched throat
thirsted for water. No devil had ever tempted a man with such
a bribe of perdition.

I suffered from the lucidity of my feelings. I saw, with indig-
nation, my own wretched self being angled for like a fish. And
with all that, in my forlorn state, I remained prudent. I did not
rush out blindly. No. I approached the inner end of the passage,
as though I had been stalking a wild creature, slowly, from the
side. I crept along the wall of the cavern, and protruded my
head far enough to look at the fiendish temptation.

There it was, a small dark object suspended in the light, with
the yellow rock across the ravine for a background. ‘The silver
top shivered the sunbeams brilliantly. I had half hopes they had
_ taken it away by this time. When I drew my head back I lost
sight of it, but all my being went out to it with an almost pitiful
longing. I remembered Castro for the first time in many hours.
Was I nothing better than Castro? He had been angled for with
salted meat. I shuddered.

A darkness fell into the passage. I put down my uplifted foot
without advancing. The unexpectedness of that shadow saved me,
I believe. Manuel had descended the cornice.

He was alone. Standing before the outer opening, he darkened
the passage, through which his talk to the people above came
loudly into my ears. ‘They could see, now, if he were not a
worthy Capataz. If the Inglez was in there he was a corpse.
And yet, of these living hearts above, of these valientes of Rio
Medio, there was not one who would go alone to look upon a dead
body. He had contrived an infallible test, and yet they would not
believe him. Well, his valiance should prove it; his valiance,
afraid neither of light nor of darkness.

324 ROMANCE

I could not hear the answers he got from up there; but the
vague sounds that reached me carried the usual commingling of
derision and applause, the resentment of their jeers at the ad-
miration he knew how to extort by the display of his talents.

They must kill the cattle, these caballeros. He scolded iron-
ically. Of course. They must feed on meat like lions; but their
souls were like the souls of hens born on dunghills. And behold!
there was he, Manuel, not afraid of shadows.

He was coming in, there could be no doubt. Out there in the
_ full light, he could not possibly have detected that rapid appear-
ance of my head darted forward and withdrawn at once; but I
had a view of his arm putting aside the swinging flask, of his leg
raised to step over the high sill. I saw him, and I ran noiselessly
away from the opening.

I had the time to charge Seraphina not to move, on our lives,
—on the wretched remnant of our lives—when his black shape
stood in the frame of the opening, edged with a thread of light
following the contour of his hat, of his shoulders, of his whole
body down to his feet-—whence a long shadow fell upon the pool
of twilight on the floor.

What had made him come down? Vanity? The exacting de-
mands of his leadership? Fear of O’Brien? The Juez would
expect to hear something definite, and his band pretended not to
believe in the stratagem of the bottle. I think that, for his part,
from his knowledge of human nature, he never doubted its efficacy.
He could not guess how very little, only, he was wrong. How
very little! And yet he seemed rooted in incertitude on the thresh-
old. His head turned from side to side. I could not make out
his face as he stood, but the slightest of his movements did not
escape me. He stepped aside, letting in all the fullness of the
light.

Would he have the courage to explore at least the immediate
neighborhood of the opening? Who could tell his complex mo-
tives? Who could tell his purpose or his fears? He had killed
a man in there once. But, then, he had not been alone. If he
were only showing oft before his unruly band, he need not stir a
step further. He did not advance. He leaned his shoulders
against the rock just clear of the opening. One half of him was

PART FOURTH 325

lighted plainly; his long profile, part of his raven locks, one listless
hand, his crossed legs, the buckle of one shoe.

“ Nobody,” he pronounced slowly, in a dead whisper.

While I looked at him, the profound politico, the artist, the
everlastingly questioned Capataz, the man of talent and ability,
he thought himself alone, and allowed his head to drop on his
breast, as if saddened by the vanity of human ambition. ‘Then,
lifting it with a jerk, he listened with one ear turned to the pas-
sage; afterwards he peered into the cavern. ‘Two long strides,
over the cold heap of ashes, brought him to the stone seat.

It was very plain to me from his starting movements and
attitudes, that he shared his uneasy attention between the inside
and the outside of the cave. He sat down, but seemed ready to
jump up; and I saw him turn his eyes upwards to the dark vault,
as if on the alert for a noise from above. I am inclined to think
he was expecting to hear the galloping hoofs of the peons’ horses
every moment. I think he did. The words “I am safer here
than they above,” were perfectly audible to me in the mumbling
he kept up nervously. He wished to hear the sound of his own
voice, as a timid person whistles and talks on a lonely road at
night. Only the year before he had killed a man in that cavern,
under circumstances that were, I believe, revolting even to the
_ honor of these bandits. He sat there between the shadow of his
murder and the reality of the vengeance. I asked myself what
could be the outcome of a struggle with him. He was armed;
he was not weakened by hunger; but he stood between us and the
water. My thirst would give me strength; the desire to end
Seraphina’s sufferings would make me invincible. On the other
hand, it was dangerous to interfere. I could not tell whether they
would not try to find out what became of him. It was safest
to let him go. It was extremely improbable that they would sail
without him.

I am not conscious of having stirred a limb; neither had Sera-
phina moved, I am ready to swear; but plainly something, some
sort of sound, startled him. He bounded out of his seated immo-
bility; and in one leap had his shoulders against the rock standing
at bay before the darkness, with his knife in his hand. I wonder
he did not surprise me into an exclamation. I was as startled as

326 ROMANCE

himself. His teeth and the whites of his eyes gleamed straight at
me from afar; he hissed with fear; for an instant I was firmly
convinced he had seen me. All this took place so quickly that I
had no time to make one movement towards receiving his attack,
when I saw him make a great sign of the cross in the air with the
point of his dagger.

He sheathed it slowly, and sidled along the few feet to the
entrance, his shoulders rubbing the wall. He blocked out the
light, and in a moment had backed out of sight.

Before he got to the further end I was already, at the inner,
creeping after him. I had started at once, as if his disappearance
had removed a spell, as though he had drawn me after him by an
invisible bond. Raising myself on my forearms I saw him, from
his knees up, standing outside the sill, with his back to the preci-
pice and his face turned up.

“There is nobody in there,” he shouted.

I sank down and wriggled forward on my stomach, raising my-
self on my elbows, now and then, to look. Manuel was looking
- upwards conversing with the people above, and holding Williams’
flask in both his hands. He never once glanced into the passage;
he seemed to be trying to undo the cord knotted to the end of the
thick rope, which hung in a long bight before him. The flask
captured my eyes, my thought, my energy. I would tear it away:
from him directly. There was in me, then, neither fear nor intel-
ligence; only the desire of possessing myself of the thing; but an
instinctive caution prevented my rushing out violently. I pro-
ceeded with an animal-like stealthiness, with which cool reason
had nothing to do.

He had some difficulty with the knot, and evidently did not
wish to cut the green silk cord. How well I remember his
fumbling fingers. He sat down sideways on the sill, with his
legs outside, of course, his face and hands turned to the light,
very absorbed in his endeavor. ‘They shouted to him from
above.

“T come at once,” he cried to them, without lifting his head.

I had crept up almost near enough to grab the flask. It never
occurred to me that by flinging myself on him, I could have pushed
him off the sill. My only idea was to get hold. He did not exist ’

— Allowed his head to drop on his breast, as if saddened by the
vanity of human ambition

an eeetanan did geo)
tek bolit i atten ae oS: 2 tale ag an
ae Gaara

vi

PART FOURTH 327

for me. The leather-covered bottle was the only real thing in the
world. I was completely insane. I heard a faint detonation, and
Manuel got up quickly from the sill. The flask was out of my
reach.

There were more popping sounds of shots fired, away on the
plain. The peons were attacking an outpost of the Lugarefos.
A deep voice cried, “They are driving them in.” Then several
together yelled:

“Come away, Manuel. Come away. Por Dios... .

Stretched at full length in the passage, and sustaining myself
on my trembling arms, I gazed up at him. He stood very rigid,
holding the flask in both hands. Several muskets were discharged
together just above, and in the noise of the reports I remember
a voice crying urgently over the edge, “ Manuel! Manuel!”
The shadow of irresolution passed over his features. He hesitated
whether to run up the ledge or bolt into the cave. He shouted
something. He was not answered, but the yelling and the firing
ceased suddenly, as if the Lugarefios had given up and taken to
their heels. I became aware of a sort of increasing throbbing sound
that seemed to come from behind me, out of the cave; then, as «
Manuel lifted his foot hastily to step over the sill, I jumped up
deliriously, and with outstretched hands lurched forward at the
flask in his fingers. ~

I believe I laughed at him in an imbecile manner. Somebody
laughed; and I remember the superior smile on his face passing
into a ghastly grin, that disappeared slowly, while his astonished
‘eyes, glaring at that gaunt and disheveled apparition rising before
him in the dusk of the passage, seemed to grow to an enormous
size. He drew back his foot, as though it had been burnt; and in
a panic-stricken impulse, he flung the flask straight into my face,
and staggered away from the sill.

I made a catch of it with a scream of triumph, whose unearthly
sound brought me back to my senses.

“In the name of God, retire,” he cried, as though I had been
an apparition from another world.

What took place afterwards happened with an inconceivable
rapidity, in less time than it takes to draw breath. He never
recognized me. I saw his glare of incredulous awe change, sud-

”

328 ROMANCE

denly, to horror and despair. He had felt himself losing his
balance.

He had stepped too far back. He tried to recover himself, but
it was too late. He hung for a moment in his backward fall; his
arms beat the air, his body curled upon itself with an awful striv-
ing. All at once he went limp all over, and, with the sunlight
full upon his upturned face, vanished downwards from my sight.

But at the last moment he managed to clutch the bight of the
hanging rope. The end of it must have been lying quite loose on
the ground above, for I saw its whole length go whizzing after
him, in the twinkling of an eye. I pressed the flask fiercely to my
breast, raging with the thought that he could yet tear it out of
my hands; but by the time the strain came, his falling body had
acquired such a velocity that I didn’t feel the slightest jerk when
the green cord snapped—no more than if it had been the thread
of a cobweb.

I confess that tears, tears of gratitude, were running down my
face. My limbs trembled. But I was sane enough not to think
of myself any more.

“ Drink! Drink,” I stammered, raising Seraphina’s head on
my shoulder, while the galloping horses of the peons in hot pursuit
passed with a thundering rumble above us. Then all was still.

Our getting out of the cave was a matter of unremitting toil,
through what might have been a year of time; the recollection is
of an arduous undertaking, accomplished without the usual in-
centives of men’s activity. Necessity, alone, remained; the iron
necessity without the glamour of freedom of choice, of pride.

Our unsteady feet crushed, at last, the black embers of the fires
scattered by the hoofs of horses; and the plain appeared immense
to our weakness, swept of shadows by the high sun, lonely and
desolate as the sea. We looked at the litter of the Lugarefos’
camp, rags on the trodden grass, a couple of abandoned blankets, a
musket thrown away in the panic, a dirty red sash lying on a heap
of sticks, a wooden bucket from the schooner, smashed water-
gourds. One of them remained miraculously poised on its round
bottom and full to the brim, while everything else seemed to have
been overturned, torn, scattered haphazard by a furious gust of
wind. A scaffolding of poles, for drying strips of meat, had been

PART FOURTH 329

knocked over; I found nothing there except bits of hairy hide;
but lumps of scorched flesh adhered to the white bones scattered
amongst the ashes of the camp—and I thanked God for them.

We averted our eyes from our faces in very love, and we did
not speak from pity for each other. There was no joy in our
escape, no relief, no sense of freedom. The Lugarefios and the
peons, the pursued and the pursuers, had disappeared from the
upland without leaving as much as a corpse in view. ‘There were
no moving things on the earth, no bird soared in the pellucid air,
not even a moving cloud on the sky. The sun declined, and the
rolling expanse of the plain frightened us, as if space had been
something alive and hostile.

We walked away from that spot, as if our feet had been shod in
lead; and we hugged the edge of the cruel ravine, as one keeps
by the side of a friend. We must have been grotesque, pathetic,
and lonely; like two people newly arisen from a tomb, shrinking
before the strangeness of the half-forgotten face of the world.
And at the head of the ravine we stopped.

The sensation of light, vastness, and solitude rolled upon our
souls emerging from the darkness, overwheliningly, like a wave
of the sea. We might have been an only couple sent back from the
underworld to begin another cycle of pain on a depopulated earth.
It had not for us even the fitful caress of a breeze; and the only
sound of greeting was the angry babble of the brook dashing
down the stony slope at our feet.

We knelt over it to drink deeply and bathe our faces. Then,
looking about helplessly, I discovered afar the belt of the sea
inclosed between the undulating lines of the dunes and the straight
edge of the horizon. I pointed my arm at the white sails of the
schooner creeping from under the land, and Seraphina, resting her
head on my shoulder, shuddered.

“Let us go away from here.”

Our necessity pointed down the slope. We could not think
of another way, and the extent of the plain with its boundary
of forests filled us with the dread of things unknown. But, by
getting down to the inlet of the sea, and following the bank of
the little river, we were sure to reach the hacienda, if only a hope
could buoy our sinking hearts long enough.

330 ROMANCE

From our first step downwards the hard, rattling noise of the
stones accompanied our descent, growing in volume, bewildering
our minds. We had missed the indistinct beginning of the trail
on the side of the ravine, and had to follow the course of the
stream. A growth of wiry bushes sprang thickly between the
large fragments of fallen rocks. On our right the shadows were
beginning to steal into the chasm. ‘Towering on our left the great
stratified wall caught at the top of the glow of the low sun in a
rich, tawny tint, right under the dark blue strip of sky, that seemed
to reflect the gloom of the ravine, the sepulchral arid gloom of
deep shadows and gray rocks, through which the shallow torrent
dashed violently with glassy gleams between the somber masses
of vegetation.

We pushed on through the bunches of tough twigs; the
massive bowlders closed the view on every side; and Seraphina
followed me with her hands on my shoulders. This was the best
way in which I could help her descent till the declivity became
less steep; and then I went ahead, forcing a path for her. Often
we had to walk into the bed of the stream. It was icy cold. Some
strange beast, perhaps a bird, invisible somewhere, emitted from
time to time a faint and lamentable shriek. It was a wild scene,
and the orifice of the cave appeared as an inaccessible black hole
some ninety feet above our heads.

Then, as I stepped round a large fragment of rock, my eyes fell
on Manuel’s body.

Seraphina was behind me. With a wave of my hand I arrested
her. It had not occurred to me before that, following the bottom
of the ravine, we must come upon the two bodies. Castro’s was
lower down, of course. I would have spared her the sight, but
there was no retracing our steps. We had no strength and no
time. Manuel was lying on his back with his hands under him, .
and his feet nearly in the brook.

The lower portion of the rope made a heap of cordage on the
ground near him, but a great length of it hung perpendicularly
above his head. ‘The loose end he had snatched over the edge in
his fall had whipped itself tight round the stem of a dwarf tree
growing in a crevice high up the rock; and as he fell below, the
jerk must have checked his descent, and had prevented him from

PART FOURTH 331

alighting on his head. There was not a sign of blood anywhere
‘upon him or on the stones. His eyes were shut. He might have
lain down to sleep there, in our way; only from the slightly un-
natural twist- in the position of his arms and legs, I saw, at a
glance, that all his limbs were broken.

On the other side of the bowlder Seraphina called to me, and
I could not answer her, so great was the shock I received in seeing
the flutter of his slowly opening eyelids.

He still lived, then! He looked at me! It was an awful dis-
covery to make; and the contrast of his anxious and feverish stare
with the collapsed posture of his body was full of intolerable
suggestions of fate blundering unlawfully, of death itself being
conquered by pain. I looked away only to perceive something
pitiless, belittling, and cruel in the precipitous immobility of the
‘sheer walls, in the dark funereal green of the foliage, in the falling
shadows, in the remoteness of the sky.

The unconsciousness of matter hinted at a weird and mysterious
antagonism. All the inanimate things seemed to have conspired to
throw in our way this man just enough alive to feel pain. ‘The
faint and lamentable sounds we had heard must have come from
‘him. He was looking at me. It was impossible to say whether
he saw anything at all. He barred our road with his remnant
of life; but, when suddenly he spoke, my heart stood still for a
moment in my motionless body.

“You, too!” he droned awfully. ‘‘ Behold! I have been
precipitated, alive, into this hell by another ghost. Nothing else
could have overcome the greatness of my spirit.”

His red shirt was torn open at the throat. His bared breast
beg2ii to heave. He cried out with pain. Ready to fly from him
myself, I shouted to Seraphina to keep away.

‘But it was too late. Imagining I had seen some new danger
in our path, she had advanced to stand by my side.

“He is dying,” I muttered in distraction. “We can do
nothing.”

But could we pass him by before he died?

“This is terrible,” said Seraphina.

My real hope had been that, after driving the Lugaretos away,
the peons would off-saddle near the little river to rest themselves

332 ROMANCE

and their horses. This is why I had almost pitilessly hurried
Seraphina, after we had left the cave, down the steep, but short
descent of the ravine. I had kept to myself my despairing con-
viction that we could never reach the hacienda unaided, even if we
had known the way. I had pretended confidence in ourselves, but
all my trust was in the assistance I expected to get from these
men. I understood so well the slenderness of that hope that I
had not dared to mention it to her and to propose she should wait
for me on the upland, while I went down by myself on that quest.
I could not bear the fear of returning unsuccessful only to find
her dead. That is, if I had the strength to return after such a
disappointment. And the idea of her, waiting for me in vain, then
wandering off, perhaps to fall under a bush and die alone, was
too appalling to contemplate. That we must keep together, at all
costs, was like a point of honor, like an article of faith with us—
confirmed by what we had gone through already. It was like a
law of existence, like a creed, like a defense which, once broken,
would let despair upon our heads. I am sure she would not have
consented to even a temporary separation. She had a sort of
superstitious feeling that, should we be forced apart, even to the
manifest saving of our lives, we would lay ourselves open to some
calamity worse than mere death could be.

I loved her enough to share that feeling, but with the addition
of a man’s half-unconscious selfishness. I needed her indomitable
frailness to prop my grosser strength. I needed that something
not wholly of this world, which women’s more exalted nature
infuses into their passions, into their sorrows, into their joys; as if
their adventurous souls had the power to range beyond the orbit
of the earth for the gathering of their love, their hate—and their
charity.

“ He calls for death,” she said, shrinking with horror and pity -
before the mutters of the miserable man at our feet. Every mo-
ment of daylight was of the utmost importance, if we were to
save our freedom, our happiness, our very lives; and we remained
rooted to the spot. For it seemed as though, at last, he had
attained the end of his enterprise. He had captured us, as if by
a very cruel stratagem.

A drowsiness would come at time over those big open eyes, like

PART FOURTH 333

a film through which a blazing glance would break out now and
then. He had recognized us perfectly; but, for the most part, we
seemed to him to be the haunting ghosts of his inferno.

“You came from heaven,” he raved feebly, rolling his straining
eyes towards Seraphina. His internal injuries must have been
frightful. Perhaps he dared not shift his head—the only move-
ment that was in his power. “I reached up to the very angels
in the inspiration of my song,” he droned, ‘“‘ and would be called
a demon on earth. Manuel el Demonio. And now precipitated
alive. . . . Nothing less. There is a greatness in me. Let some
dew fall upon my lips.”

He moaned from the very bottom of his heart. His teeth
chattered. -

“The blessed may not know anything of the cold and thirst of
this place. A drop of dew—as on earth you used to throw alms to
the poor from your coach—for the love of God.”

She sank on the stones nearer to him than I would willingly
have done, brave as a woman, only, can be before the atrocious
depths of human misery. I leaned my shoulders against the
bowlder and crossed my arms on my breast, as if giving up an
unequal struggle. Her hair was loose, her dress stained with
ashes, torn by brambles; the darkness of the cavern seemed to
linger in her hollow cheeks, in her sunken temples,

“ He is thirsty,” she murmured to me.

“Yes,” I said.

She tore off a strip of her dress, dipped it in the running water
at her side, and approached it, all dripping, to his lips which closed
upon it with avidity. ‘The walls of the rock looked on implacably,
but the rushing stream seemed to hurry away, as if from an ac-
cursed spot.

“Dew from heaven,” he sighed out.

“You are on earth, Manuel,” she said. “ You are given time
to repent. This is earth.”

“Impossible,” he muttered with difficulty.

He had forced his human fellowship upon us, this man whose
ambition it had been to be called demon on the earth. He held
us by the humanity of his broken frame, by his human glance, by
his human voice. I wonder if, had I been alone, I would have

334 ROMANCE

passed on as reason dictated, or have had the courage of pity and
finished him off, as he demanded. Whenever he became aware
of our presence, he addressed me as “ Thou, English ghost,” and
directed me, in a commanding voice, to take a stone and crush his
head, before I went back to my own torments. I withdrew, at
last, where he could not see me; but Seraphina never flinched in
her task of moistening his lips with the strip of cloth she
dipped in the brook, time after time, with a sublime perseverance
of compassion.

It made me silent. Could I have stood there and recited the
sinister detail of that man’s crimes, in the hope that she would
recoil from him to pursue the road of safety? It was not his evil,
but his suffering that confronted us now. ‘The sense of our kin-
ship emerged out of it like a fresh horror after we had escaped
the sea, the tempest; after we had resisted untold fatigues, hunger,
thirst, despair. We were vanquished by what was in us, not in
him. I could say nothing. The light ebbed out of the ravine.
_ The sky, like a thin blue veil stretched between the earth and the
spaces of the universe, filtered the gloom of the darkness beyond.

I thought of the invisible sun ready to set into the sea, of the
peons riding away, and of our helpless, hopeless state.

“ For the love of God,” he mumbled.

“Yes, for the love of God,” I heard her expressionless voice
repeat. And then there was only the greedy sound of his lips
sucking at the cloth, and the impatient ripple of the stream.

“Come, death,” he sighed.

Yes, come, I thought, to release him and to set us free. All
my prayer, now, was that we should be granted the strength to
struggle from under the malignant frown of these crags, to close
our eyes forever in the open.

And the truth is that, had we gone on, we should have found
no one by the sea. The routed Lugarefios had been able to embark
under cover of a fusillade from those on board the schooner. All
that would have met our despair, at the end of our toilsome march,
would have been three dead pirates lying on the sand. The main
body of the peons had gone, already, up the valley of the river
with their few wounded. There would have been nothing for
us to do but to stumble on and on upon their track, till we lay

PART FOURTH 335

down never to rise again. They did not draw rein once, between
the sea and the hacienda, sixteen miles away.

About the time when we began our descent into the ravine, two
of the peons, detached from the main body for the purpose of
observing the schooner from the upland, had topped the edge of
the plain. We had then penetrated into Manuel’s inferno, too
deep to be seen by them. ‘These men spent some time lying on
the grass, and watching over the dunes the course of the schooner
on the open sea. ‘Their horses were grazing near them. The
wind was light; they waited to see the vessel far enough down the
coast to make any intention of return improbable.

It was Manuel who saved our lives, defeating his own aim to
the bitter end. Had not his vanity, policy, or the necessity of his
artistic soul, induced him to enter the cave; had not his cowardice
prevented him joining the Lugarefios above, at the moment of the
attack; had he not recoiled violently in a superstitious fear before
my apparition at the mouth of the cave—we should have been
released from our entombment, only to look once more at the sun.
He paid the price of our ransom, to the uttermost farthing, in his
lingering death. Had he killed himself on the spot, he would
have taken our only slender chance with him into that nether
world where he imagined himself to have been “ precipitated
alive.” Finding him dead, we should have gone on. Less than
ten minutes, no more than another ten paces beyond the spot, we
should have been hidden from sight in the thickets of denser
growth in the lower part of the ravine. I doubt whether we
should have been able to get through; but, even so, we should have
been going away from the only help within our reach. We should
have been lost.

The two vaqueros, after seeing the schooner hull down under
the low, fiery sun of the west, mounted and rode home over the
plain, making for the head of the ravine, as their way lay. And,
as they cantered along the side opposite to the cave, one of them
caught sight of the length of rope dangling down the precipice.
They pulled up at once.

The first I knew of their nearness was the snorting of a horse
forced towards the edge of the chasm. I saw the animal’s fore-
legs planted tensely on the very brink, and the body of the rider

336 ROMANCE

leaning over his neck to look down. And, when I wished to shout,
I found I could not produce the slightest sound.

The man, rising in his stirrups, the reins in one hand and _ turn-
ing up the brim of his sombrero with the other, peered down at
us over the pricked ears of his horse. I pointed over my head
at the mouth of the cave, then down at Seraphina, lifting my
hands to show that I was unarmed. I opened my lips wide.
Surprise, agitation, weakness, had robbed me of every vestige of
my voice. I beckoned downwards with a desperate energy.
Horse and rider remained perfectly still, like an equestrian statue
set up on the edge of a precipice. Seraphina had never raised her
head.

The man’s intent scrutiny could not have mistaken me for a
Lugarefio. J think he gazed so long because he was amazed to
discover down there a woman on her knees, stooping over a pros-
trate body, and a bare-headed man in a ragged white shirt and
black breeches, reeling between the bushes and gesticulating vio-
lently, like an excited mute. But how a rope came to hang down
from a tree, growing in a position so inaccessible that only a bird
could have attached it there struck him as the most mysterious
thing of all. He pointed his finger at it interrogatively, and
I answered this inquiring sign by indicating the stony slope of
the ravine. It seemed as if he could not speak for wonder.
After a while he sat back in his saddle, gave me an encourag-
ing wave of the hand, and wheeled his horse away from the
brink.

It was as if we had been casting a spell of extinction on each
other’s voices. No sooner had he disappeared. than I found mine.
I do not suppose it was very loud but, at my aimless screech, Sera-
phina looked upwards on every side, saw no one anywhere, and
remained on her knees with her eyes, full of apprehension, fixed
upon me.

“No! I am not mad, dearest,” I said. “‘ There was a man.
He has seen us.”

“Oh, Juan!” she faltered out, “ pray with me that God may
have mercy on this poor wretch and let him die.”

I said nothing. My thin, quavering scream after the peon had
awakened Manuel from his delirious dream of an infernc. The

PART FOURTH 337

voice that issued from his shattered body was awfully measured,
hollow, and profound.

“You live!” he uttered slowly, turning his eyes full upon my
face, and, as if perceiving for the first time in me the appearance of
a living man. “Ha! You English walk the earth unscathed.”

A feeling of pity came to me—a pity distinct from the harrow-
ing sensations of his miserable end. He had been evil in the ob-
scurity of his life, as there are plants growing harmful and deadly
in the shade, drawing poison from the dank soil on which they
flourish. He was as unconscious of his evil as they—but he had a
man’s right to my pity.

“T am b—roken,” he stammered out.

Seraphina kept on moistening his lips.

“ Repent, Manuel,” she entreated fervently. “We have for-
given thee the evil done to us. Repent of thy crimes—poor
man.”

“ Your voice, sefiorita. What? You! You yourself bringing
this blessing to my lips! In your childhood I had cried ‘ viva’
many times before your coach. And now you deign—in your
voice—with your hand. Ha! I could improvise—The star
stoops to the crushed worm. . . .”

A rising clatter of rolling stones mingled from afar with the
broken moanings of his voice. Looking over my shoulder, I saw
one peon beginning the descent of the slope, and, higher up, mo-
tionless between the heads of two horses, the head of another
man—with the purple tint of an enlarged sky beyond, reflecting
the glow of an invisible sun setting into the sea.

Manuel cried out piercingly, and we shuddered. Seraphina
shrank close to my side, hiding her head on my breast. The peon
staggered awkwardly down the slope, descending sideways in
small steps, embarrassed by the enormous rowels of his spurs. He
had a striped serape over his shoulder, and grasped a broad-bladed
machete in his right hand. His stumbling, cautious feet sent into
the ravine a crashing sound, as though we were to be buried under
a stream of stones.

“ Vuestra sefioria,’ gasped Manuel. “TI shall be silent. Pity
me! Do not—do not withdraw your hand from my extreme

pain.”

33 8 ROMANCE

I felt she had to summon all her courage to look at him again.
She disengaged herself, resolutely, from my enfolding arms.

“No, no; unfortunate man,” she said, in a benumbed voice.
“Think of thy end.”

“ A crushed worm, sefiorita,”’ he mumbled.

The peon, having reached the bottom of the slope, became lost
to view amongst the bushes and the great fragments of rocks
below. Every sound in the ravine was hushed; and the darkening
sky seemed to cast the shadow of an everlasting night into the
eyes of the dying man.

Then the peon came out, pushing through, in a great swish of
parted bushes. His spurs jingled at every step, his footfalls
crunched heavily on the pebbles. He stopped, as if transfixed,
muttering his astonishment to himself, but asking no questions.
He was a young man with a thin black mustache twisted gal-
lantly to two little points. He looked up at the sheer wall of the
precipice; he looked down at the group we formed at his feet.
Suddenly, as if returning from an abyss of pain, Manuel declared
distinctly :

““T feel in me a greatness, an inspiration. . . .

These were his last words. The heavy dark lashes descended
slowly upon the faint gleam of the eyeballs, like a lowered curtain.
The deep folds of the ravine gathered the falling dusk into great
pools of absolute blackness, at the foot of the crags.

Rising high above our littleness, that watched, fascinated, the
struggle of lights and shadows over the soul entangled in the
wreck of a man’s body, the rocks had a monumental indifference.
And between their great, stony faces, turning pale in the gloom,
with the amazed peon as if standing guard, machete in hand,
Manuel’s greatness and his inspiration passed away without as
much as an exhaled sigh. I did not even know that he had ceased
to breathe, till Seraphina rose from her knees with a low cry, and
flung far away from her, nervously, the strip of cloth upon which
his parted lips had refused to close.

My arms were ready to receive her. “Ah! At last!” she
cried. ‘There was something resentful and fierce in that cry, as —
though the pity of her woman’s heart had been put to too cruel
a test.

”

PART FOURTH 339

I, too, had been humane to that man. I had had his life on the
end of my pistol, and had spared him from an impulse that had
done nothing but withhold from him the mercy of a speedy death.
This had been my pity.

But it was Seraphina’s cry—this “ At last,” showing the stress
and pain of the ordeal—that shook my faith in my conduct. It
had brought upon our heads a retribution of mental and bodily
anguish, like a criminal weakness. I was young, and my belief
in the justice of life had received a shock. If it were impossible
to foretell the consequences of our acts, if there was no safety in
the motives within ourselves, what remained for our guidance?

And the inscrutable immobility of towering forms, steeped in
the shadows of the chasm, appeared pregnant with a dreadful
wisdom. It seemed to me that I would never have the courage
to lift my hand, open my lips, make a step, obey a thought. A
long sun-ray shot to the zenith from the beclouded west, crossing
obliquely in a faint red bar the purple band of sky above the ravine.

The young vaguero had taken off his hat before the might of
death, and made a perfunctory sign of the cross. He looked
up and down the lofty wall, as if it could give him the word
of that riddle. Twice his spurs clashed softly, and, with one
hand grasping the rope, he stooped low in the twilight over the

body.
“We looked for this Lugarefio,’ he said, replacing his hat on
his head carelessly. ‘‘ He was a mad singer, and I saw him once

kill one of us very swiftly. They used to call him in jest, El
Demonio. Ah! But you... But you... .”

His wonder overcame him. His bewildered eyes glimmered,
staring at us in the deepening dusk.

“Speak, hombre,’ he cried. ‘“ Who are you and who is
she? Whence came you? Where are you going with this
woman? ...”

CHAPTER XI

OT a soul stirred in the one long street of the negro

village. The yellow crescent of the diminished moon

swam low in the pearly light of the dawn; and the
bamboo walls of huts, thatched with palm leaves, glistened here
and there through the great leaves of bananas. All that night we
had been moving on and on, slowly crossing clear savannas, in
which nothing stirred beside ourselves but the escort of our own
shadows, or plunging through dense patches of forest of an ob-
scurity so impenetrable that the very forms of our rescuers became
lost to us, though we heard their low voices and felt their hands
steadying us in our saddles. Then our horses paced softly on the
dust of a road, while athwart an avenue of orange trees whose
foliage seemed as black as coal, the blind walls of the hacienda
shone dead white like a vision of mists. A Brazilian aloe flowered
by the side of the gate; we drooped in our saddles; and the heavy
knocks against the wooden portal seemed to go on without cause,
and stop without reason, like a sound heard in a dream. We
entered Seraphina’s hacienda. The high walls inclosed a square
court deep as the yard of a prison, with flat-roofed buildings all
around. It rang with many voices suddenly. Every moment the
daylight increased; young negresses in loose gowns ran here and
there, cackling like chased hens, and a fat woman waddled out
from under the shadow of a veranda. ’

She was Seraphina’s old nurse. She was scolding volubly, and
suddenly she shrieked, as though she had been stabbed. Then all
was still for a long time. Sitting high on the back of my patient
mount, with my fingers twisted in the mane, I saw in a throng
of woolly heads and bright garments Seraphina’s pale face. An
increasing murmur of sobs and endearing names mounted up to
me. Her hair hung down, her eyes seemed immense; these people
were carrying her off—and a man with a careworn, bilious face

34°

PART FOURTH , 341

and a straight, gray beard, neatly clipped on the edges, stood at
the head of my horse, blinking with astonishment.

The fat woman reappeared, rolling painfully along the veranda.

“Enrico! It is her lover! Oh! my treasure, my lamb, my
precious child. Do you hear, Enrico? Her lover! Oh! the poor
darling of my heart.”

She appeared to be giggling and weeping at the same time.
_ The sky above the yard brightened all at once, as if the sun had
emerged with a leap from the distant waters of the Atlantic. She
waved her short arms at me over the railing, then plunged her
dark fingers in the shock of iron-gray hair gathered on the top of
her head. She turned away abruptly, a yellow headkerchief
dodged in her way, a slap resounded, a cry of pain, and a negro
girl bolted into the court, nursing her cheek in the palms of her
hands. Doors slammed; other negro girls ran out of the’ veranda
dismayed, and took cover in various directions.

I swayed to and fro in the saddle, but faithful to the plan of
our escape, I tried to make clear my desire that these peons should
be sworn to secrecy immediately. Meantime, somebody was trying
to disengage my feet from the stirrups.

“Certainly. It is as your worship wishes.”

The careworn man at the head of my horse was utterly in the
dark.

“ Attention!” he shouted. “Catch hold, hombres. Carry the
caballero.”

What caballero? A rosy flush tinged a boundless expanse above
my face, and then came a sudden contraction of space and dusk.
There were big earthenware jars ranged in a row on the floor,
and the two vaqueros stood bareheaded, stretching their arms over
me towards a black crucifix on a wall, taking their oaths, while I
rested on my back. A white beard hovered about my face, a voice
said, “It is done,” then called anxiously twice, ‘“‘ Sefior! Sefior! ”
and when I had escaped from the dream of a cavern, I found
myself with my head pillowed on a fat woman’s breast, and drink-
ing chicken broth out of a basin held to my lips. Her large cheeks
quivered, she had black twinkling eyes and slight mustaches at the
corners of her lips. But where was her white beard? And why
did she talk of an angel, as if she were Manuel?

342 ROMANCE

“Seraphina! ” I cried, but Castro’s cloak swooped on my head
like a sable wing. It was death. I struggled. Then I died. It
was delicious to die. I followed the floating shape of my love
beyond the worlds of the universe. We soared together above
pain, strife, cruelty, and pity. We had left death behind us and
everything of life but our love, which threw a radiant halo
around two flames which were ourselves—and immortality in-
closed us in a great and soothing darkness.

Nothing stirred in it. We drifted no longer. We hung in it
quite still—and the empty husk of my body watched our two
flames side by side, mingling their light in an infinite loneliness.
There were two candles burning low on a little black table near
my head. Enrico, with his white beard and zealous eyes, was
bending over my couch, while a chair, on high runners, rocked
empty behind him. I stared.

“Senior, the night is far advanced,” he said soothingly, “ and
Dolores, my wife, watches over Dofia Seraphina’s slumbers, on
the other side of this wall.”

I had been dead to the world for nearly twenty hours, and the
awakening resembled a new birth, for I felt as weak and helpless
as an infant.

It is extraordinary how quickly we regained so much of our
strength; but I suppose people recover sooner from the effects of
privation than from the weakness of disease. Keeping pace with
the return of our bodily vigor, the anxieties of mind returned,
augmented tenfold by all the weight of our sinister experience.
And yet, what worse could happen to us in the future? What
other terror could it hold? We had come back from the very
confines of destruction. But Seraphina, reclining back in an arm-
chair, very still, with her eyes fixed on the high white wall facing
the veranda across the court, would murmur the word “ Separa-
tion!”

The possibility of our lives being forced apart was terrible to
her affection, and intolerable to her pride. She had made her
choice, and the feeling she had surrendered herself to so openly
must have had a supreme potency. She had disregarded for it all
the traditions of silence and reserve. She had looked at me fondly
through the very tears of her grief; she had followed me—leaving

PART FOURTH . 343

her dead unburied and her prayers unsaid. What more could she
have done to proclaim her love to the world? Could she, after
that, allow anything short of death to thwart her fidelity? Never!
And if she were to discover that I could, after all, find it in my
heart to support an existence in which she had no share, then,
indeed, it would be more than enough to make her die of shame.

“ Ah, dearest!’ I said, “ you shall never die of shame.”

We were different, but we had read each other’s natures by a
fierce light. I understood the point of honor in her constancy,
and she never doubted the scruples of my true devotion, which had
brought so many dangers on her head. We were flying not to
save our lives, but to preserve inviolate our truth to each other
and to ourselves. And if our sentiments appear exaggerated,
violent, and overstrained, I must point back to their origin. Our
love had not grown like a delicate flower, cherished in tempered
sunshine. It had never known the atmosphere of tenderness; our
souls had not been awakened to each other by a gentle whisper,
but as if by the blast of a trumpet. It had called us to a life whose
enemy was not death, but separation.

The enemy sat at the gate of our shelter, as death sits at the
gate of life. These high walls could not protect us, nor the
tearful mumble of the old woman’s prayers, nor yet the careworn
fidelity of Enrico. The couple hung about us, quivering with
emotion. ‘They peeped round the corners of the veranda, and
only rarely ventured to come out openly. “The silent Galician
stroked his clipped beard ; the obese woman kept on crossing herself
with loud, resigned sighs. She would waddle up, wiping her
eyes, to stroke Seraphina’s head and murmur endearing names.
They waited on us hand and foot, and would stand close together,
ready for the slightest sign, in a rapt contemplation. Now and
then she would nudge her husband’s ribs with her thick elbow and
murmur, “ Her lover.”

She was happy when Seraphina let her sit at her feet, and hold
her hand. She would pat it with gentle taps, squatting shape-
lessly on a low stool.

“Why go so far from thy old nurse, darling of my heart? Ah!
love is love, and we have only one life to live, but this England
is very far—very far away.”

344 : ROMANCE

She nodded her big iron-gray head slowly; and to our longing
England appeared very distant, too, a fortunate isle across the seas,
an abode of peace, a sanctuary of love.

There was no plan open to us but the one laid down by Se-
bright. The secrecy of our sojourn at the hacienda had, in a
measure, failed, though there was no reason to suppose the two
peons had broken their oath. Our arrival at dawn had been un-
observed, as far as we knew, and the domestic slaves, mostly girls,
had been kept from all communication with the field hands out-
side. All these square leagues of the estate were very much out
of the world, and this isolation had not been broken upon by any
of O’Brien’s agents coming out to spy. It seemed to be the only
part of Seraphina’s great possessions that remained absolutely her
own.

Not a whisper of any sort of news reached us in our hiding-
place till the fourth evening, when one of the vagueros reported
to Enrico that, riding on the inland boundary, he had fallen in
with a company of infantry encamped on the edge of a little wood.
Troops were being moved upon Rio Medio. He brought a note
from the officer in command of that party. It contained nothing
but a requisition for twenty head of cattle. ‘The same night we
left the hacienda.

It was a starry darkness. Behind us the soft wailing of the
old woman at the gate died out:

“So far! So very far!”

We left the long street of the slave village on the left, and
walked down the gentle slope of the open glade towards the little
river. Seraphina’s hair was concealed in the crown of a wide
sombrero and, wrapped up in a serape, she looked so much like
a cloaked vaquero that one missed the jingle of spurs out of her
walk. Enrico had fitted me out in his own clothes from top to .
toe. He carried a lanthorn, and we followed the circle of light
that swayed and trembled upon the short grass. There was no
one else with us, the crew of the drogher being already on board
to await our coming.

Her mast appeared above the roof of some low sheds grouped
about a short wooden jetty. Enrico raised the lamp high to light
us, as we stepped on board.

PART FOURTH 345

Not a word was spoken; the five negroes of the crew (Enrico
answered for their fidelity) moved about noiselessly, almost in-
visible. Blocks rattled feebly aloft.

“Enrico,” said Seraphina, “do not forget to put a stone cross
over poor Castro’s grave.”

“No, sefiorita. May you know years of felicity. We would
all have laid down our lives for you. Remember that, and do not
forget the living. Your childhood has been the consolation of the
poor woman there for the loss of our little one, your foster brother,
who died. We have given to you much of our affection for him
who was denied to our old age.”

He stepped back from the rail. ‘“‘ Go with God,” he said.

The faint air filled the sail, and the outlines of wharf and roof
fell back into the somber background of the land, but the lanthorn
in Enrico’s hand glimmered motionless at the end of the jetty, till
a bend of the stream hid it from our sight.

We glided smoothly between the banks. Now and then a
stretch of osiers and cane brakes rustled alongside in the darkness.
All was strange; the contours of the land melted before our ad-
vance. [he earth was made of shifting shadows, and only the
stars remained in unchanged groups of glitter on the black sky.
We floated across the land-locked basin, and under the low head-
land we had steered for from the sea in the storm. All this, seen
only once under streams of lightning, was unrecognizable to us,
and seemed plunged in deep slumber. But the fresh feel of the sea
air, and the freedom of earth and sky wedded on the sea horizon,
returned to us like old friends, the companions of that time when
we communed in words and silences on board the Lion, that frag-
ment of England found in a mist, boarded in battle, with its absurd
and warm-hearted protection. On our other hand, the rampart
of white dunes intruded the line of a ghostly shore between the
depth of the sea and the profundity of the sky; and when the faint
breeze failed for a moment, the negro crew troubled the silence
with the heavy splashes of their sweeps falling in slow and solemn
cadence. The rudder creaked gently; the black in command was
old and of spare build, resembling Cesar, the major-domo, without
the splendor of maroon velvet and gold lace. He was a very good
sailor, I believe, taciturn and intelligent. He had seen the Lion

346 ROMANCE

frequently on his trips to Havana, and would recognize her, he
assured me, amongst a whole host of shipping. When I had ex-
plained what was expected of him, according to Sebright’s pro-
gramme, a bizarre grimace of a smile disturbed the bony, mournful
cast of his African face.

“Fall on board by accident, sefior. Si’ Now, by St. Jago of
Compostella, the patron of our hacienda, you shall see this old
Pedro—who has been set to sail the craft ever since she was built
—as overcome by an accident as a little rascal of a boy that has
stolen a boat.”

After this wordy declaration he never spoke to us again. He
gave his short orders in low undertones, and the others, four stal-
wart blacks, in the prime of life, executed them in silence. An-
other night brought the unchanging stars to look at us in their
multitudes, till the dawn put them out just as we opened the
entrance of the harbor. The daylight discovered the arid coloring
of the coast, a castle on a sandy hill, and a few small boats with
ragged sails making for the land. A brigantine, that seemed to
have carried the breeze with her right in, threw up the Stars and
Stripes radiantly to the rising sun, before rounding the point.
The sound of bells came out to sea, and met us while we crept
slowly on, abreast of the battery at the water’s edge.

“A feast-day in the city,” said the old negro at the helm. ‘“ And
here is an English ship of war.”

The sun-rays struck from afar full at her belted side; the water
was like glass along the shore. She swam into the very shade
of the hill, before she wore round, with great deliberation, in an
ample sweep of her head-gear through a complete half-circle. She
came to the wind on the other tack under her short canvas; her
lower deck ports were closed, the hammock cloths made like a ridge
of unmelted snow lying along her rail. :

It was evident she was kept standing off and on outside the
harbor, as an armed man may pace to and fro before a gate. With
the hum of six hundred wakeful lives in her flanks, the tap-tapping
of a drum, and the shrill modulations of the boatswain’s calls
piping some order along her decks, she floated majestically across
our path. But the only living being we saw was the red-coated
marine on sentry by the lifebuoys, looking down at us over the

PART FOURTH 347

taffrail. We passed so close to her that I could distinguish the
whites of his eyes, and the tompions in the muzzles of her stern-
chasers protruding out of the ports belonging to the admiral’s
quarters.

I knew her. She was Rowley’s flagship. She had thrown the

shadow of her sails upon the end of my first sea journey. She
was the man-of-war going out for a cruise on that day when
Carlos, Tomas, and myself arrived in Jamaica in the old Thames.
And there she was meeting me again, after two years, before
Havana—the might of the fortunate isle to which we turned our
eyes, part and parcel of my inheritance, formidable with the cour-
age of my countrymen, humming with my native speech—and as
foreign to my purposes as if I had forfeited forever my brithright
in her protection. I had drifted into a sort of outlaw. You may
not break the king’s peace and be made welcome on board a
king’s ship. You may not hope to make use of a king’s ship for
the purposes of an elopement. ‘There was no room on board that
seventy-four for our romance.
_ As it was, I very nearly hailed her. What would become of us
if the Lion had already left Havana? I thought. But no. To
hail her meant separation—the only forbidden thing to those who,
in the strength of youth and love, are permitted to defy the world
together.

I did not hail; and the marine dwindled to a red speck upon
the noble hull forging away from us on the offshore tack. ‘The
brazen clangor of bells seemed to struggle with the sharp puff
of the breeze that sent us in.

The shipping in harbor was covered with bunting in honor of
the feast-day; for the same reason, there was not a sign of the usual
crowd of small boats that give animation to the waters of a port;
the middle of the harbor was strangely empty. A solitary bum-
boat canoe, with a yellow bunch of bananas in the bow, and an old
negro woman dipping a languid paddle at the stern, were all that
met my eye. Presently, however, a six-oared custom-house galley
darted out from the tier of ships, pulling for the American brigan-
tine. I noticed in her, beside the ordinary port officials, several
soldiers, and a person astonishingly like the alguazil of the illus-
trations to Spanish romances. One of the uniformed sitters waved

348 ROMANCE

his hand at us, recognizing an estate drogher, and shouted some
directions, of which we only caught the words:

“ Steps—examination—to-morrow.”

Our steersman took off his old hat humbly, to hail back, “ Muy
bien, sefior.”

I breathed freely, for they gave us no more of their attention.
Soldiers, alguazil, and custom-house officers were swarming aboard
the American, as if bent on ransacking her from stem to stern in
the shortest possible time, so as not to be late for the procession.

The absence of movement in the harbor, the festive and idle
appearance of the ships, with the flutter of innumerable flags on
the forest of masts, and the great uproar of church bells in the air,
made an impressive greeting for our eyes and ears. And the
deserted aspect of the harbor front of the city was very striking,
too. The feast had swept the quays of people so completely that
the tiny pair of sentries at the foot of a tall yellow building
caught the eye from afar. Seraphina crouched on a coil of rope
under the bulwark; old Pedro, at the tiller, peered about from
under his hand, and I, trying to expose myself to view as little as
possible, helped him to look for the Lion. ‘There she is. Yes!
No! There she was. A crushing load fell off my chest. We
had made her out together, old Pedro and I.

And then the last part of Sebright’s plan had to be carried out
at once. The foresheet of the drogher appeared to part, our main-
sail shook, and before I could gasp twice, we had drifted stern
foremost into the Lion’s mizzen chains with a crash that brought
a genuine expression of concern to the old negro’s face. He had
managed the whole thing with a most convincing skill, and with-
out even once glancing at the ship. We had done our part, but
the people of the Lion seemed to fail in theirs unaccountably.
Of all the faces that crowded her rail at the shock, not one ap-:
peared with a glimmer of intelligence. All the cargo ports were
down. ‘Their surprise and their swearing appeared to me alarm-
ingly unaffected; with a most imbecile alacrity they exerted them-
selves, with small spars and boathooks, to push the drogher off.
Nobody seemed to recognize me; Seraphina might have been a
peon sitting on deck, cloaked from neck to heels and under a som-
brero. I dared not shout to them in English, for fear of being

PART FOURTH 349

heard on board the other ships around. At last Sebright himself
appeared on the poop.

He gave one look over the side. ;

“What the devil . . .” he began. Was he blind, too?

Suddenly I saw him throw up his arms above his head. He
vanished. A port came open with a jerk at the last moment. I
lifted Seraphina up: two hands caught hold of her, and, in my
great hurry to scramble up after her, I barked my shins cruelly,
The port fell; the drogher went on bumping alongside, com- ©
pletely disregarded. Seraphina dropped the cloak at her feet and
flung off her hat.

“Good-morning, amigos,” she said gravely.

A hissed “‘ Damn you fools—keep quiet!” from Sebright, stifled
the cheer in all those bronzed throats. Only a thin little poor
“hooray ” quavered along the deck. The timid steward had not
been able to overcome his enthusiasm. He slapped his head in
despair, and rushed away to bury himself in his pantry.

“Turned up, by heavens! . . . Goin. . . . Good God! ...
Bucketfuls of tears. . . .” stammered Sebright, pushing us into
the cuddy. “Goin! Go in at once!”

Mrs. Williams rose from behind the table wide-eyed, clasping
her hands, and stumbled twice as she ran to us.

“What have you done to that child, Mr. Kemp!” she cried
insanely at me. ‘Oh, my dear, my dear! You look like your
own ghost.”

Sebright, burning with impatience, pulled me away. The
cabin door fell upon the two women, locked in a hug, and, stepping
into his stateroom, we could do nothing at first but slap each
other on the back and ejaculate the most unmeaning exclamations,
like a couple of jocular idiots. But when, in the expansion of my
heart, I tried to banter him about not keeping his word to look
out for us, he bent double in trying to restrain his hilarity, slapped
his thighs, and grew red in the face.

The excellent joke was that, for the past six days, we had been
supposed to be dead—drowned; at least Dofia Seraphina had been
provided with that sort of death in her own name; I was drowned,
too, but in the disguise of a piratical young English nobleman.

*’There’s nothing too bad for them to believe of us,” he com-

350 ROMANCE

mented, and guffawed in his joy at seeing me unscathed. “ Dead!
Drowned! Ha! Ha! Good, wasn’t it?”

Mrs. Williams—he said—had been weeping her eyes out over
our desolate end; and even the skipper had sulked with his food for
a day or two.

“Ha! Ha! Drowned! Excellent!” He shook me by the
shoulders, looking me straight in the eyes—and the bizarre, nervous
hilarity of my reception, so unlike his scornful attitude, proved
that he, too, had believed the rumor. Indeed, nothing could have
been more natural, considering my inexperience in handling boats
and the fury of the norther. It had sent the Lion staggering into
Havana in less than twenty hours after we had parted from her
on the coast.

Suddenly a change came over him. He pushed me on to the
settee.

“Speak! Talk! What has happened? Where have you been
all this time? Man, you look ten years older.”

“Ten years. Is that all?’ I said.

And after he had heard the whole story of our passages he ap-
peared greatly sobered.

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” he muttered, lost in deep thought,
till I reminded him it was his turn, now, to speak.

“You are the talk of the town,” he said, recovering his elas-
ticity of spirit as he went on. The death of Don Balthasar had
been the first great sensation of Havana, but it seemed that
O’Brien had kept that news to himself, till he heard by an over-
land messenger that Seraphina and I had escaped from the Casa
Riego.

Then he gave it to the world; he let it be inferred that he had
the news of both events together. The story, as sworn to by
various suborned rascals, and put out by his creatures, ran that
an English desperado, arriving in Rio Medio with some Mexicans
in a schooner, had incited the rabble of the place to attack the
Casa Riego. Don Balthasar had been shot while defending his
house at the head of his negroes; and Don Balthasar’s daughter
had been carried off by the English pirate.

The amazement and sensation were extreme. Several of the
first families went into mourning. A service for the repose of

- PART FOURTH 351

Don Balthasar’s soul was sung in the Cathedral. Captain Wil-
liams went there out of curiosity, and returned full of the magnifi-
cence of the sight; nave draped in black, an enormous catafalque,
with silver angels, more than life-size, kneeling at the four corners
with joined hands, an amazing multitude of lights. A demonstra-
tion of unbounded grief from the Judge of the Marine Court had
startled the distinguished congregation. In his place amongst the
body of higher magistrature, Don Patricio O’Brien burst into an
uncontrollable paroxysm of sobs, and had to be assisted out of
the church.

It was almost incredible, but I could well believe it. With the
thunderous strains of Dies Irae rolling over his bowed head,
amongst all these symbols and trappings of woe, he must have
seen, in the black anguish of his baffled passion, the true image of
death itself, and tasted all the profound deception of life. Who
could tell how much secret rage, jealousy, regret, and despair had
gone to that outburst of grief, whose truth had fluttered a dis-
tinguished company of mourners, and had nearly interrupted their
official supplications for the repose of that old man, who had been
dead to the world for so many years? I believe that, on that very
day, just as he was going to the service, O’Brien had received the
news of our supposed death by drowning. ‘The music, the voices,
the lights of the grave, the pomp of mourning, awe, and supplica-
tion crying for mercy upon the dead, had been too much for him.
He had presumed too much upon his fortitude. He wept aloud
for his love lost, for his vengeance defeated, for the dreams gone
out of his life, for the inaccessible consummation of his desire.

“ And, you know, with all these affairs, he feels himself wab-
bling in his socket,” Sebright began again, after musing for a
while. Indeed, the last events in Rio Medio were endangering
his position. He could no more present his reports upon the state
of the province, with incidental reflections upon the bad faith of
the English Government (who encouraged the rebels against the
Catholic king), the arrogance of the English admiral, and con-
cluding with the loyalty and honesty of the Rio Medio popula-
tion, ‘‘ who themselves suffered many acts of molestation from the
Mexican pirates.” The most famous of these papers, printed at
that time in the official Gazette, had recommended that the loyal

352 ROMANCE

town should be given a battery of thirty-six pounders for purposes
of self-defense. They had been given them just in time to be
turned on Rowley’s boats; it is known with what deadly effect.
O’Brien’s report after that event had made it clear that the
virtuous population of the bay, exasperated by the intrusions of
the Mexicanos upon their peaceful state, and abhorring in their
souls the rebellion trying to lift its envenomed head, etc., etc.,

. heroically manned the battery to defend their town from
‘lie boats which they took to be these very pirates the British »
admiral was in search of. He pleaded for them the uncertain
light of the early morning, the ardor of citizens, valorous, but nat-
urally inexperienced in matters of war, and the impossibility to
suppose that the admiral of a friendly power would dispatch an
armed force to land on these shores. I have read these things
with my own eyes; there were old files of the Gazette on board,
and Sebright, who had been reading up his O’Brien, pointed them
out to me with his finger, muttering:

“ Here—look there. Pretty, aint it?”

But that was all over. The bubble had burst. It was reported
in town that the private audience the Juez had lately from the
Captain-General was of a most stormy description. ‘They say old
Marshal What-d’ye-call-’um ended by flinging his last report in
his face, and asking him how dared he work his lawyer’s tricks
upon an old soldier. Good old fighting cock. But stupid. All
these old soldiers were stupid, Sebright declared. Old admirals,
too. However, the land troops had arrived in Rio Medio by this
time; the J'ornado frigate, too, no doubt, having sailed four days
ago, with orders to burn the villages to the ground; and the good
Lugarezos must be catching colds trying to hide from the cara-
bineers in the deep, damp woods.

Our admiral was awaiting the issue of that expedition. Re- .
turning home under a cloud, Rowley wanted to take with him
the assurance of the pirate nest being destroyed at. last, as a sort
of diplomatic feather in his cap.

“He may think,” Sebright commented, “that it’s his sailorly
bluff that has done it, but, as far as I can see, nobody but you
yourself, Kemp, had anything to do with bringing it about.
Funny, is it not? Old Rowley keeps his ship dodging outside be-

PART FOURTH } 353

cause it’s cooler at sea than stewing in this harbor, but he sends
in a boat for news every morning. What he is most anxious for
is to get the notorious Nichols into his hands; take him home for
a hanging. It seems clear to me that they are humbugging him
ashore. Nichols! Where’s Nichols? ‘There are people here who
say that Nichols has had free board and lodging in Havana jail for
the last six months. Others swear that it is Nichols who has
killed the old gentleman, run off with Dofia Seraphina, and got
drowned. Nichols! Who’s Nichols? On that showing you are
Nichols. Anybody may be Nichols. Who has ever seen him
outside Rio Medio? I used to believe in him at one time, but,
upon my word I begin to doubt whether there ever was such a
man.”

“ But the man existed, at any rate,’ I said. “I knew him—
I’ve talked with him. He came out second mate in the same ship
with me—in the old Thames. Ramon took charge of him in
Kingston, and that’s the last positive thing I can swear to, of him.
But that he was in Rio Medio for two years, and vanished from
there almost directly after that unlucky boat affair, I am absolutely
certain.”

“ Well, I suppose O’Brien knows where to lay his hand on him.
But, no matter where the fellow is, in jail or out of it, the admiral
will never get hold of him. If they had him they could not think
of giving him up. He knows too much of the game; and remem-
ber that O’Brien, if he wabbles in the socket, is by no means down
yet. A man like that doesn’t get knocked over like a ninepin.
You may be sure he has twenty skeletons put away in good places,
that he will haul out one by one, rather than let himself be
squashed. He’s not going to give in. A few days since a priest ‘
—your priest, you know—turned up here on foot from Rio Medio,
and went about wringing his hands, declaring that he knew all the
truth, and meant to make a noise about it, too. O’Brien made
short work of him, though; got the archbishop to send him into
retreat, as they call it, to a Franciscan convent a hundred miles
from here. These things are whispered about all along the gutters
of this place.”

I imagined the poor Father Antonio, with his simple resignation,
mourning for us in his forced retreat, broken-hearted, and mur-

354 ROMANCE

muring, “Inscrutable, inscrutable.” I should have liked to see
the old man.

“T tell you the town is fairly buzzing with the atrocities of this
business,” Sebright went on. “It’s the thing for fashionable
people to go and see what I may call the relics of the crime. They
are on show in the waiting-hall of the Palace of Justice. Why,
I went there myself. You go through a swing door into a big
place that, for cheerfulness, is no better than a monster coal cellar,
and there you behold, laid out on a little black table, Mrs. Wil-
liams’ woolen shawl, your sefiorita’s tortoise-shell comb, that had
got entangled in it somehow, and my old cap that I lent you—
you remember. I assure you, it gave me the horrors to see the
confounded things spread out there in that dim religious light.
Dash me, if I didn’t go queer all over. And all the time swell
carriages stopping before the portico, dressed-up women walking
up in pairs and threes, sighing before the missus’ shawl, turning
up their eyes, ‘Ah! Pobrecita! Pobrecita! But what a strange
wrap for her to have. It is very coarse. Perished in the flower
of her youth. Incredible! Oh, the savage, cruel Englishman.’
The funniest thing in the world.”

But if this was so, Manuel’s Lugarefios were now in Havana.
Sebright pointed out that, as things stood, it was the safest place
for them, under the wing of their patron. Sebright had recog-
nized the schooner at once. She came in very early one morning,
and hauled herself unostentatiously out of sight amongst a ruck
of small craft moored in the lower part of the harbor. He took
the first opportunity to ask one of the guards on the quay what
was that pretty vessel over there, just to hear what the man would
say. He was assured that she was a Porto Rico trader of no con-
sequence, well known in the port.

“Never mind the scoundrels; they can do nothing more to
you.”

Sebright dismissed the Lugarefos out of my life. The unfavor-
able circumstance for us was that the captain had gone ashore.
The ship was ready for sea; absolutely cleared; papers on board;
could go in an hour if it came to that; but, at any rate, next morn-
ing at daylight, before O’Brien could get wind of the Riego,
drogher arriving. Every movement in port was reported to the

PART FOURTH 355

Juez; but this was a feast, and he would not hear of it probably
till next day. Even fiestas had their uses sometimes. In his
anxiety to discover Seraphina, O’Brien had played such pranks
amongst the foreign shipping (after the Lion had been drawn
blank) that the whole consular body had addressed a joint protest
to the Governor, and the Juez had been told to moderate his
efforts. No ship was to be visited more than once. Still I had
seen, myself, soldiers going in a boat to board the American brigan-
tine: a garlic-eating crew, poisoning the cabins with their breath,
and poking their noses everywhere. Of course, since our supposed
drowning, there had been a lull; but the least thing might start
him off again. He was reputed to be almost out of his mind
with sorrow, arising from his great attachment for the family.
He walked about as if distracted, suffered from insomnia,
and had not been fit to preside in his court for over a week,
now.

“ But don’t you expect Williams back on board directly? ”

He shook his head.

“No. Not even to-night. He told the missus he was going
to spend the day out of town with his consignee, but he tipped
me the wink. This evening he will send a note that the con-
signee detains him for the night, because the letters are not ready,
and I’ll have to go to her and lie, the best I am able, that it’s
quite the usual thing. Damn!”

I was appalled. ‘This was too bad. And, as I raged against the
dissolute habits of the man, Sebright entreated me to moderate
my voice so as not to be heard in the cabin. Did I expect the
man to change his skin? He had been doing the gay bachelor
about here all his life; had never suspected he was doing anything
particularly scandalous either.

“He married the old girl out of chivalry,—the romantic fat
beggar,—and never realized what it meant till she came out with
him,” Sebright went on whispering to me. “ He loves and honors
her more than you may think. That is so, for all your shrugs, Mr.
Kemp. It is not so easy to break the old connection as you
imagine. Why, the other evening, two of his dissolute habits (as
you call them) came off, with mantillas over their heads, in a
boat, in company with a male scallawag of sorts, pinching a man-

356 ROMANCE

dolin, and serenaded the ship for him. We were all in the cabin.
after supper, and poor Mrs. Williams, with her eyes still red from
weeping over you people, says to us, ‘ How sweet and melancholy
that sounds,’ says she. You should have seen the skipper rolling
his eyes at me. The perspiration of fright was simply pouring
down his face. I rushed on deck, and it took me all my Spanish to
stop them from coming aboard. I had to swear by all the saints,
and the honor of a caballero, that there was a wife. ‘They went
away laughing at last. They did not want to make trouble. They
simply had not believed the tale before. ‘Thought it was some
dodge of his. I could hear their peals of laughter all the way
up the harbor. These are the difficulties we have. The old girl
must be protected from that sort of eye-opener, if I’ve to forswear
my soul. I’ve been keeping guard over her ever since we arrived
here—besides looking out for you people, as long as there was any
hope.”

I was greatly cast down. Perhaps Williams was justified in
making concessions to the associates of his former jolly existence
to save some outrage to the feelings of his consort. I did not want
to criticise his motives—but what about getting him back on
board at once?

Sebright was biting his lip. The necessity was pressing, he
admitted.

He had an idea where to find him. But for himself he could
not go—that was evident. Neither would I wish him to leave
the ship, even for a moment, now Seraphina was on board. An
unexpected visit from some zealous police understrapper, a mo-
mentary want of presence of mind on the part of the timid
steward; there was enough to bring about. our undoing. More-
over, as he had said, he must remain on guard over the missus.
But whom to send? There was not a single boatman about. |
The harbor was a desert of water and dressed ships; but even
the crews of most of them were ashore—‘ on a regular spree of
praying,” as he expressed it vexedly. As to our own crew, not
one of them knew anything more of Spanish than a few terms of
abuse, perhaps. ‘Their hearts were in the right place, but as to
their wits, he wouldn’t trust a single one of them by himself—
no, not an inch away from the ship. How could he send one

PART FOURTH 357

of them ashore with the wine-shops yawning wide on all sides,
and not enough lingo to ask for the way. Sure to get drunk, to
get lost, to get into trouble in some way, and in the end get picked
up by the police. The slightest hitch of that sort would call at-
tention upon the ship—and with O’Brien to draw inferences.
. - . He rubbed his head.

““T suppose Ill have to go,” he grunted. “ But I am known;
I may be followed. ‘They may wonder why I rush to fetch
_my skipper. And yet I feel this is the time. The very time. Be-
tween now and four o’clock to-morrow morning we have an
almost absolute certitude of getting away with you two. This is
our chance and your chance.”

He was lost in perplexity. ‘Then, as if inspired, I cried:

“JT will go!”

“The devil!” he said, amazed. “ Would you?”

I rushed at him with arguments. No one would know me.
My clothes were all right and clean enough for a feast-day. I
could slip through the crowds unperceived. ‘The principal thing
was to get Seraphina out of O’Brien’s reach. At the worst, I
could always find means to get away from Cuba by myself. ‘There
was Mrs. Williams to look after her, and if I missed Williams by
some mischance, and failed to make my way back to the ship in
time, I charged them solemnly not to wait, but sail away at the
earliest possible moment.

I said much more than this. I was eloquent. I became as if
suddenly intoxicated by the nearness of freedom and safety. The
thought of being at sea with her in a few hours, away from all
trouble of mind or heart, made my head swim. It seemed to me I
should go mad if I was not allowed to go. My limbs tingled with
eagerness. I stuttered with excitement.

“ Well—after all!’ Sebright mumbled.

“TI must go in and tell her,” I said.

“No. Don’t do that,” said that wise young man. ‘‘ Have you
made up your mind?”

“Yes, I have,” I answered. “ But she’s reasonable.”

“Still,” he argued, “the old girl is sure to say that nothing of
the kind is necessary. ‘The captain told her that he was coming
back for tea. What could we say to that? We can’t explain the

358 ROMANCE

true state of the case, and if you persist in going, it will look like
pig-headed folly on your part.”

He threw his writing-desk open for me.

“Write to her. Write down your arguments—what you have
been telling me. It’s a fact that the door stands open for a few
hours. As to the rest,’’ he pursued, with a weary sigh, “Ill do
the lying to pass it off with Mrs. Williams.”

Thus it came about that, with only two flimsy bulkheads be-
tween us, I wrote my first letter to Seraphina, while Sebright went
on deck to make arrangements to send me ashore. He was some
time away; long enough for me to pour out on paper the exultation
of my thought, the confidence of my hope, my desire to have her
safe at last with me upon the blue sea. One must seize a propitious
moment lest it should slip away and never return, I wrote. I
begged her to believe I was acting for the best, and only from my
great love, that could not support the thought of her being so
near O’Brien, the arch-enemy of our union. ‘There was no sepa-
ration on the sea.

Sebright came in brusquely.

“ Come along.”

The American brigantine was berthed by then, close astern of
the Lion, and Sebright had the idea of asking her mate to let his
boat (it was in the water) put ashore a visitor he had on board.
His own were hoisted, he explained, and there were no boatmen
plying for hire.

His request was granted. I was pulled ashore by two American
sailors, who never said a word to each other, and evidently took me
for a Spaniard.

It was an excellent idea. By borrowing the Yankee’s boat, the
track of my connection with the Lion was covered. The silent
seamen landed me, as asked by Seabright, near the battery on the _
sand, quite clear of the city.

I thanked them in Spanish, and, traversing a piece of open
ground, made a wide circle to enter the town from the land side,
to still further cover my tracks. I passed through a sort of squalid
suburb of huts, hovels, and negro shanties. I met very few people,
and these mostly old women, looking after the swarms of children
of all colors and sizes, playing in the dust. Many curs sunned

PART FOURTH 359

themselves among heaps of rubbish, and took not the trouble to
growl at me. Then I came out upon a highroad, and turned my
face towards the city lying under a crude sunshine, and in a ring
of metallic vibrations.

Better houses with plastered fronts washed yellow or blue,
and even pinky red, alternated with tumble-down wooden struc-
tures. A crenelated squat gateway faced me with a carved shield
of stone above the open gloom. A young smooth-faced mulatto,
in some sort of dirty uniform, but wearing new straw slippers
with blue silk rosettes over his naked feet, lounged cross-legged at
the door of a kind of guardroom. He held a big cigar tilted up
between his teeth, and ogled me, like a woman, out of the corners
of his languishing eyes. He said not a word.

Fortunately my face had tanned to a dark hue. Enrico’s clothes
would not attract attention to me, of course. The light color of
my hair was concealed by the handkerchief bound under my hat;
my footsteps echoed loudly under the vault, and I penetrated into
the heart of the city.

And directly, it seemed to me, I had stepped back three hundred
years. I had never seen anything so old; this was the abandoned
inheritance of an adventurous race, that seemed to have thrown
all its might, all its vigor, and all its enthusiasm into one supreme
effort of valor and greed. I had read the history of the Spanish
Conquest; and, looking at these great walls of stone, I felt my
heart moved by the same wonder, and by the same sadness. With
what a fury of heroism and faith had this whole people flung itself
upon the opulent mystery of the New World. Never had a nation
clasped closer to its heart its dream of greatness, of glory, and of
Romance. There had been a moment in its destiny, when it could
believe that Heaven itself smiled upon its massacres. I walked
slowly, awed by the solitude. They had conquered and were no
more, and these wrought stones remained to testify gloomily to the
death of their success. Heavy houses, immense walls, pointed arches
of the doorways, cages of iron bars projecting balconywise around
each square window. And not a soul in sight, not a head looking
out from these dwellings, these houses of men, these ancient
abodes of hate, of base rivalries, of avarice, of ambitions—these old
nests of love, these witnesses of a great romance now past and

360 ROMANCE

gone below the horizon. They seemed to return mournfully my
wondering glances; they seemed to look at me and say, “ What
do you here? We have seen other men, heard other footsteps! ”
The peace of the cloister brooded over these aged blocks of
masonry, stained with the green trails of mosses, infiltrated with —
shadows.

At times the belfry of a church would volley a tremendous
crash of bronze into the narrow streets; and between whiles I could
hear the faint echoes of far-off chanting, the brassy distant gasps
of trombones. A woman in black whisked round a corner, hurry-
ing towards the route of the procession. I took the same direction.
From a wine-shop, yawning like a dirty cavern in the basement of
a palatial old building, issued suddenly a brawny ruffan in rags, —
wiping his thick beard with the back of a hairy paw. He lurched
a little, and began to walk before me hastily. I noticed the glitter
of a gold earring in the lobe of his huge ear.

His cloak was frayed at the bottom into a perfect fringe and,
as he flung it about, he showed a good deal of naked skin under it.
His calves were bandaged cross-wise; his peaked hat seemed to
have been trodden upon in filth before he had put it on his head.
Suddenly I stopped short. A Lugarefio!

We were then in the empty part of a narrow street, whose
lower end was packed close with a crowd viewing the procession
which was filing slowly past, along the wide thoroughfare. It was
too late for me to go back. Moreover, the ruffian paid no atten-
tion to me. It was best to go on. ‘The people, packed between
the houses with their backs to us, blocked our way. I had to
wait.

He took his position near me in the rear of the last rank of the
crowd. He must have been inclined to repentance in his cups,
because he began to mumble and beat his breast. Other people
in the crowd were also beating their breasts. In front of me I
had the facade of a building which, according to the little plan
of my route Sebright drew for me, was the Palace of Justice. It
had a peristyle of ugly columns at the top of a flight of steps.
A cordon of infantry kept the roadway clear. The singing went
on without interruption; and I saw tall saints of wood, gilt and
painted red and blue, pass, borne shoulder-high, swaying and

PART FOURTH 361,

pitching above the heads of the crowd like the masts of boats in
a seaway. Crucifixes were carried, flashing in the sun; an enor-
mous Madonna, which must have weighed half a ton, tottered
across my line of sight, dressed up in gold brocade and with a
wreath of paper roses on her head. A military band sent a hurri-
cane blast of brasses as it went by. ‘Then all was still at once,
except the silvery tinkling of hand-bells. The people before me
fell on their knees together and left me standing up alone.

As a matter of fact I had been caught gaping at the ceremony
quite new to me, and had not expected a move of that sort. The
ruffian kneeling within a foot of me thumped and bellowed in an
ecstasy of piety. As to me, I own I stood there looking with im-
patience at a passing canopy that seemed all gold, with three priests
in gorgeous capes walking slowly under it, and I absolutely forgot .
to take off my hat. The bearded ruffan looked up from the
midst of his penitential exercises, and before I realized I was
outraging his or anybody else’s feelings, leaped up with a yell,
“Thou sacrilegious infidel,” and sent my hat flying off my head.

Just then the band crashed again, the bells pealed out, and no
one heard his shout. With one blow of my fist I sent him stagger-
ing backwards. ‘The procession had passed; people were rising
from their knees and pouring out of the narrow street. Swearing,
he fumbled under his cloak; I watched him narrowly; but in a
moment he sprang away and lost himself amongst the moving
crowd. I picked up my hat.

For a time I stood very uneasy, and then retreated under a
doorway. Nothing happened, and I was anxious to get on. It
was possible to cross the wide street now. That Lugarefo did not
know me. He was a Lugarefo, though. No doubt about it. I
would make a dash now;; but first I stole a hasty glance at the plan
‘of my route which I kept in the hollow of my palm.

“Sefior,” said a voice. I lifted my head.

An elderly man in black, with a white mustache and imperial,
stood before me. The ruffian was stalking up to his side, and four
soldiers with an officer were coming behind. I took in the whole
disaster at a glance.

“The sefior is no doubt a foreigner—perhaps an Englishman,”
said the official in black. He had a lace collar, a chain on his

362 ROMANCE

neck, velvet breeches, a well-turned leg in black stockings. His
voice was soft.

I was so disconcerted that I nodded at him.

“The sefior is young and inconsiderate. Religious feelings
ought to be respected.” The official in black was addressing me
in sad and measured tones. ‘‘ This good Catholic,” he continued,
eying the bearded ruffian dubiously, ‘‘ has made a formal statement
to me of your impious demonstration.”

What a fatal accident, I thought, appalled; but I tried to
explain the matter. I expressed regret. The other gazed at me
benevolently.

“‘ Nevertheless, sefior, pray follow me. Even for your own
safety. You must give some account of yourself.”

This I was firmly resolved not to give. But the Lugarefio had
been going through a pantomime of scrutinizing my person. . He
crouched up, stepped back, then to one side.

“This worthy man,” began the official in black, ‘‘ complains of
your violence, too. . . .”

“This worthy man,” I shouted stupidly, “is a pirate. He is
a Rio Medio Lugarefio. He is a criminal.”

The official seemed astounded, and I saw my idiotic mistake
at once—too late!

“Strange,” he murmured, and, at the same time, the ruffianly
wretch began to shout:

“Tt is he! The traitor! The heretic! I recognize him! ”

“Peace, peace!’ said the man in black.

“T demand to be taken before the Juez Don Patricio for a
deposition,” shrieked the Lugarefio. A crowd was beginning to
collect.

The official and the officer exchanged consulting glances. At
a word from the latter, the soldiers closed upon me.

I felt utterly overcome, as if the earth had crumbled under my
feet, and the heavens had been rent in twain. I walked between
my captors across the street amongst hooting knots of people, and
up the steps of the portico, as if in a frightful dream.

In the gloomy, chilly hall they made me wait. A soldier stood
on each side of me, and there, absolutely before my eyes on a
little table, reposed Mrs. Williams’ shawl and Sebright’s cap.

PART FOURTH 363

This was the very hall of the Palace of Justice of which Sebright
had spoken. It was more than ever like an absurd dream, now.
But I had the leisure to collect my wits. I could not claim the
Consul’s protection simply because I should have to give him a
truthful account of myself, and that would mean giving up Sera-
phina. The Consul could not protect her. But the Lion would
sail on the morrow. Sebright would understand it if Williams
did not. I trusted Sebright’s sagacity. Yes, she would sail to-
morrow evening. A day and a half. If I could only keep the
knowledge of Seraphina from O’Brien till then—she was safe, and
I should be safe, too, for my lips would be unsealed. I could
claim the protection of my Consul and proclaim the villainy of
the Juez.

“ Go in there now, sefior, to be confronted with your accuser,”
said the official in black, appearing before me. He pointed at a
small door to the left. My heart was beating steadily. I felt
& sort of intrepid resignation,

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PART FIFTH
THE LOT OF MAN

CHAPTER I

' , y HY have I been brought here, your worships?” I
asked, with a great deal of firmness.

There were two figures in black, the one beside, the
other behind a large black table. I was placed in front of them,
between two soldiers, in the center of a large, gaunt room, with
bare, dirty walls, and the arms of Spain above the judge’s
seat.

“You are before the Juez de la Primiera Instancia,”’ said the
man in black beside the table. He wore a large and shadowy
tricorn. “ Be silent, and respect the procedure.”

It was, without doubt, excellent advice. He whispered some
words in the ear of the Judge of the First Instance. It was plain
enough to me that the judge was a quite inferior official, who
merely decided whether there were any case against the accused;
he had, even to his clerk, an air of timidity, of doubt.

I said, “‘ But I insist on knowing. . . .”

The clerk said, “In good time. . . .” And then, in the same
tone of disinterested official routine, he spoke to the Lugarefio,
who, from beside the door, rolled very frightened eyes from the
judges and the clerk to myself and the soldiers—‘‘ Advance.”

‘ The judge, in a hurried, perfunctory voice, put questions to the
Lugareno; the clerk scratched with a large quill on a sheet of
paper.

“Where do you come from?”

“The town of Rio Medio, excellency.”

“ Of what occupation? ”

“ Excellency—a few goats. . . .”

“ Why are you here?”

365

366 ROMANCE

““My daughter, excellency, married Pepe of the posada in the
Caller tc tee

The judge said, “ Yes, yes,’ with an unsanguine impatience.
The Lugarefo’s dirty hands jumped nervously on the large rim
of his limp hat.

“You lodge a complaint against the sefior there.”

The clerk pointed the end of his quill towards me.

“1? God forbid, excellency,” the Lugarefo bleated. “The
Alguazil of the Criminal Court instructed me to be watch-
5 ena Aa

“You lodge an information, then?” the Juez said.

“Maybe it is an information, excellency,” the Lugarefio an-
swered, ‘“‘ as regards the sefior there.”

The Alguazil of the Criminal Court had told him, and many
other men of Rio Medio, to be on the watch for me, “ undoubtedly
touching what had happened, as all the world knew, in Rio
Medio.”

He looked me full in the face with stupid insolence, and said:

“ At first I much doubted, for all the world said this man was
dead—though others said worse things. Perhaps, who knows? ”

He had seen me, he said, many times in Rio Medio, outside the
Casa; on the balcony of the Casa, too. And he was sure that I
was a heretic and an evil person.

It suddenly struck me that this man—I was undoubtedly
familiar with his face—must be the lieutenant of Manuel-del-
Popolo, his boon companion. Without doubt, he had seen me on
the balcony of the Casa.

He had gained a lot of assurance from the conciliatory manner
of the Juez, and said suddenly, in a tentative way:

“An evil person; a heretic? Who knows? Perhaps it was
he who incited some people there to murder his sefioria, the illus--
trious Don.”

I said almost contemptuously, “ Surely the charge against me
is most absurd? Everyone knows who I am.”

The old judge made a gentle, tired motion with his hand.

“Sefior,” he said, “‘ there is no charge against you—except that
no one knows who you are. You were in a place where very
lamentable and inexplicable things happened; you are now in

PART FIFTH 367

Havana: you have no passport. I beg of you to remain calm.
These things are all in order.”

I hadn’t any doubt that, as far as he knew, he was speaking the
truth. He was a man, very evidently, of a weary and naive sim-
plicity. Perhaps it was really true—that I should only have to
explain; perhaps it was all over.

O’Brien came into the room with the casual step of an official
from an office entering another’s room.

It was as if seeing me were a thing that he very much disliked
—at that he came because he wanted to satisfy himself of my ex-
istence, of my identity, and my being alone. The slow stare that
he gave me did not mitigate the leisureliness of his entry. He
walked behind the table; the judge rose with immense deference;
with his eternal smile, and no word spoken, he motioned the judge
to resume the examination; he stood looking at the clerk’s notes
meditatively, the smile still round lips that had a nervous tremble,
and eyes that had dark marks beneath them. He seemed as if
he were still smiling just after having been violently shaken.

The judge went on examining the Lugarefo.

“Do you know whence the sefior came?”

“Excellency, excellency. . . .” The man stuttered, his eyes
on O’Brien’s face.

“ Nor how long he was in the town of Rio Medio?” the judge
went on.

O’Brien suddenly drooped towards his ear. “ All those things
are known, sefior, my colleague,” he said, and began to whisper.

The old judge showed signs of very naive astonishment and joy.

“Ts it possible?” he exclaimed. ‘“‘This man? He is very
young to have committed such crimes.”

The clerk hurriedly left the room. He returned with many
papers. O’Brien, leaning over the judge’s shoulder, emphasized
words with one finger. What new villainies could O’Brien be
meditating? It wasn’t possibly the Lugarefo’s suggestion that I
had lured men to murder Don Balthasar? Was it merely that I
had infringed some law in carrying off Seraphina?

The old judge said, “ How lucky, Don Patricio! We may
now satisfy the English admiral. What good fortune! ”

He suddenly sat straight in his chair; O’Brien behind him

368 ROMANCE

scrutinizing my face—to see how I should bear what was
coming.

“What is your name?” the judge asked peremptorily.

I said, “‘ Juan—John Kemp. I am of noble English family; I
am well enough known. Ask the Sefior O’Brien.”

On O’Brien’s shaken face the smile hardened.

“T heard that in Rio Medio the sefior was called . . . was
called . . .” He paused and appealed to the Lugarefo.

- What was he called—the capataz, the man who led the pica-
roons?”

The Lugarefio stammered, ‘‘ Nikola . . . Nikola el Escoces,
Sefior Don Patricio.”

“You hear?” O’Brien asked the judge. ‘“‘ This villager identi-
fies the man.”

“ Undoubtedly—undoubtedly,” the Juez said. “ We need no
more evidence. . . . You, sefior, have seen this villain in Rio
Medio, this villager identifies him by name.”

I said, “‘ This is absurd. A hundred witnesses can say that I
am John Kemp... .”

“That may be true,
clerk: ;

“Write here, ‘ John Kemp, of noble British family, called, on
the scene of his crimes, Nikola el Escoces, otherwise El De-
monio.’ ”

I shrugged my shoulders. I did not, at the moment, realize to
what this all tended.

The judge said to the clerk, “ Read the Act of Accusation.
Read here. . . .” He was pointing to a paragraph of the papers
the clerk had brought in. They were the Act of Accusation, pre-
pared long before, against the man Nichols.

This particular villainy suddenly became grotesquely and por-.
tentously plain. The clerk read an appalling catalogue of sordid
crimes, working into each other like kneaded dough—the testi-
mony of witnesses who had signed the record. Nikola had looted
fourteen ships, and had apparently murdered twenty-two people
with his own hand—two of them women—and there was the
affair of Rowley’s boats. “The pinnace,” the clerk read, “ of —
the British came within ten yards. The said Nikola then ex-

”

the Juez said dryly, and then to his

PART FIFTH - 369

claimed, ‘Curse the bloodthirsty hounds,’ and fired the grape-
shot into the boat. Seven were killed by that discharge. This I
saw with my own eyes. . . . Signed, Isidoro Alemanno.” And
another swore, “ The said Nikola was below, but he came running
up, and with one blow of his knife severed the throat of the man
who was kneeling on the deck. . . .”

There was no doubt that Nikola had committed these crimes;
that the witnesses had sworn to them and signed the deposition.

The old judge had evidently never seen him, and now
O’Brien and the Lugarefio had sworn that I was Nikola el
Escoces, alias El Demonio.

My first impulse was to shout with rage; but I checked it be-
cause I knew I should be silenced. I said:

_“T am not Nikola el Escoces. That I can easily prove.”

The Judge of the First Instance shrugged his shoulders and
looked, with implicit trust, up into O’Brien’s face.

“That man,” I pointed at the Lugarefo, “is a pirate. And,
what is more, he is in the pay of the Sefor Juez O’Brien. He
was the lieutenant of a man called Manuel-del-Popolo, who com-
manded the Lugarefos after Nikola left Rio Medio.”

“You know very much about the pirates,” the Juez said, with
the sardonic air of a very stupid man. ‘‘ Without doubt you were
intimate with them. I sign now your order for committal to the
carcel of the Marine Court.”

I said, “ But I tell you I am not Nikola... .

The Juez said impassively, “ You pass out of my hands into
those of the Marine Court. I am satisfied that you are a person
deserving of a trial. That is the limit of my responsibility.”

I shouted then, “ But I tell you this O’Brien is my personal
enemy.”

The old man smiled acidly.

“The sefior need fear nothing of our courts. He will be
handed over to his own countrymen. Without doubt of them
he will obtain justice.” He signed to the Lugarefio to go, and
rose, gathering up his papers; he bowed to O’Brien. “I leave the
criminal at the disposal of your worship,” he said, and went out
with his clerk.

O’Brien sent out the two soldiers after him, and stood there

”

370 ROMANCE

alone. He had never been so near his death. But for sheer curi-
osity, for my sheer desire to know what he could say, I would
have smashed in his brains with the clerk’s stool. I was going to
~do it; I made one step towards the stool. Then I saw that he was
crying.

“The curse—the curse of Cromwell on you,” he sobbed sud-
denly. ‘‘ You send me back to hell again.” He writhed his whole
body. “ Sorrow!’ he said, ‘I know it. But what’s this? What’s
this?”

The many reasons he had-for sorrow flashed on me like a pro-
cession of somber images.

“ Dead and done with a man can bear,” he muttered. “ But
this—Not to know—perhaps alive—perhaps hidden—She may be
dead. . . .” With a change like a flash he was commanding
me.

“Tell me how you escaped.”

I had a vague inspiration of the truth.

“You aren’t fit for a decent man’s speaking to,” I said.

“You let her drown.”

It gave me suddenly the measure of his ignorance; he did not
know anything—nothing. His hell was uncertainty. Well, let
him stay there.

“Where is she?” he said. “ Where is she?”

“Where she’s no need to fear you,” I answered.

He had a sudden convulsive gesture, as if searching for a
Weapon.

“Tf you'll tell me she’s alive . . .” he began.

“Oh, I’m not dead,” I answered.

“ Never a drowned puppy was more,” he said, with a flash of
vivacity. “You hang here—for murder—or in England for
piracy.” '

“Then I’ve little to want to live for,” I sneered at him.

“You let her drown,” he said. ‘You took her from that
house, a young girl, in a little boat. And you can hold up your
head.”

“T was trying to save her from you,” I answered.

“By God,” he said. “‘ These English—I’ve seen them, spit the
child on the mother’s breast. I’ve seen them set fire to the thatch

PART FIFTH 371

of the widow and childless. But this... . But this... I
can save you, I tell you.” }

“You can’t make me go through worse than I’ve borne,” I
_ answered. Sorrow and all he might wish on my head, my life
was too precious to him till I spoke. I wasn’t going to speak.

“Tl search every ship in the harbor,” he said passionately.

“Do,” I said. “ Bring your Lugarefios to the task.”

Upon the whole, I wasn’t much afraid. Unless he got definite
evidence he couldn’t—in the face of the consul’s protests, and the
presence of the admiral—touch the Lion again. He fixed his eyes
intently upon me.

“You came in the American brigantine,” he said. ‘‘ It’s known
you landed in her boat.”

I didn’t answer him; it was plain enough that the drogher’s
arrival had either not been reported to him, or it had been searched
in vain.

“In her boat,” he repeated. “I tell you I know she is not
dead ; even you, an Englishman, must have a different face if she

“T don’t at least.ask you for life,’ I said, “to enjoy with
her.”

“ She’s alive,” he said. ‘‘ Alive! As for where, it matters little.
I'll search every inch of the island, every road, every hacienda.
You don’t realize my power.”

“Then search the bottom of the sea,” I shouted.

“ Let’s look at the matter in the right light.”

He had mastered his grief, his incertitude. He was himself
again, and the smile had returned, as if at the moment he forced
his features to their natural lines.

“Send one of your friars to heaven—you’ll never go there
yourself to meet her.”

“ Tf you will tell me she’s alive, I’ll save you.”

I made a mute, obstinate gesture.

“If she’s alive, and you don’t tell me, I can’t but find her.
And I'll make you know the agonies of suspense—a long way
from here.”

I was silent.

“If she’s dead, and you'll tell me, I'll save you some trouble.

372 ROMANCE

If she’s dead and you don’t, you'll have your own remorse and the
rest, too.” pid :

I said, “ You’re too Irish mysterious for me to understand.
But you’ve a choice of four evils for me—choose yourself.”

He continued with a quivering, taut good-humor. “ Prove
to me she’s dead, and I’ll let you die sharply and mercifully.”

“ You won’t believe!’ I said; but he took no notice.

“T tell you plainly,” he smiled. “If we find . . . if we find
her dear body—and I can’t help but, I’ve men on the watch all
along the shores—I’ll give you up to your admiral for a pirate.
You’ll have a long slow agony of a trial; I know what English
justice is. And a disgraceful felon’s death.”

I was thinking that, in any case, a day or so might be gained,
the Lion would be gone; they could not touch her while the flag-
ship remained outside. I certainly didn’t want to be given up to
the admiral; I might explain the mistaken identity. But there was
the charge of treason in Jamaica. I said:

“IT only ask to be given up; but you daren’t do it for your own
credit. I can show you up.”

He said, ‘‘ Make no mistake! If he gets you, he'll hang you.
He’s going home in disgrace. Your whole blundering Govern-
ment will work to hang you.”

“They know pretty well,’ I answered, ‘“‘ that there are queer
doings: in Havana. I promise you I'll clear things up. I know
too! muchii..0.567

He said, with a sudden, intense note of passion, ‘“‘ Only tell me
where her grave is, I'll let you go free. You couldn’t, you dare
not, dastard that you are, go away from where she died—without

. without making sure.”

“Then search all the new graves in the island,” I said, “ I'll
tell you nothing. . . . Nothing!” :

He came at me again and again, but I never spoke after that.
He made all the issues clearer and clearer—his own side involun-
tarily and all the griefs I had to expect. As for him, he dare not
kill me—and he dare not give me up to the admiral. In his
suspense, since, for him, I was the only person in the world who
knew Seraphina’s fate, he dare not let me out of his grip. And
all the while he had me he must keep the admiral there, waiting

PART FIFTH 373

for the surrender either of myself or of some other poor devil
whom he might palm off as Nikola el Escoces. While the ad-
miral was there the Lion was pretty safe from molestation, and
she would sail pretty soon.

At the same time, except for the momentary sheer joy of tor-
menting a man whom I couldn’t help regarding as a devil, I had
more than enough to fear. I had suffered too much; I wanted
rest, woman’s love, slackening off. And here was another endless
coil—endless. If it didn’t end in a knife in the back, he might
keep me for ages in Havana; or he might get me sent to England,
where it would take months, an endless time, to prove merely that
I wasn’t Nikola el Escoces. I should prove it; but, in the mean-
time, what would become of Seraphina? Would she follow me
to England? Would she even know that I had gone there? Or
would she think me dead and die herself? O’Brien knew nothing;
his spies might report a hundred uncertainties. He was standing
rigidly still now, as if afraid to move for fear of breaking down.
He said suddenly:

“You came in some ship; you can’t deceive me, I shall have
them all searched again.”

I said desperately, “Search and be damned—whatever ships
you like.”

“You cold, pitiless, English scoundrel,’ he shrieked suddenly.
The breaking down of his restraint had let him go right into
madness. ‘‘ You have murdered her. You cared nothing; you
came from nowhere. A beggarly fool, too stupid to be ever an
adventurer. A miserable blunderer, coming in blind; coming out
blind; and leaving ruin and worse than hell. What good have you |
done yourself? What could you? What did you see? What did
you hope? . . . Sorrow? Ruin? Death? I am acquainted with
them. It is in the blood; ’tis in the tone; in the entrails of us,
in our mother’s milk. Your accursed land has brought always
that on our own dear and sorrowful country. . . . You waste,
you ruin, you spoil. What for? . . . Tell me what for? Tell
me? Tell me? What did you gain? What will you ever gain?
An unending curse! . . . But, ah, ye’ve no souls.”

He called very loudly, as if with a passionate relief, his voice
giving life to an unsuspected, misgiving echo:

374 ROMANCE

“Guards! Soldiers! . . . You shall be shot, now!”

He was going to cut the knot that way. Two soldiers pushed
the door noisily open, their muskets advanced. He took no notice
of them; and they retained an attitude of military stupidity, their
eyes upon him. He whispered:

“No, no! Not yet!”

Then he looked at me searchingly, as if he still hoped to get
some certainty from my face, some inkling, perhaps some inspira-
tion of what would persuade me to speak. ‘Then he shook his
wrists violently, as if in fear of himself.

“Take him away,” he said. “ Away! Out of reach of my
hands. Out of reach of my hands.”

I was trembling a good deal; when the soldiers entered I
thought I had got to my last minute. But, as it was, he had not
learnt a thing of me. Nota thing. And I did not see where else
he could go for information.

CHAPTER II

HE entrance to the common prison of Havana was a sort

of lofty tunnel, finished by great, iron-rusted, wooden

gates. A civil guard was exhibiting the judge’s warrant
for my committal to a white-haired man, with a red face and blue
eyes, that seemed to look through tumbled bushes of silver eye-
brows—the alcayde of the prison. He bowed, and rattled two
farcically large keys. A practicable postern was ajar on the yellow
wood of the studded gates. It was as if it afforded a glimpse of
the other side of the world. The venerable turnkey, a gnome in
a steeple-crowned hat, protruded a blood-red hand backwards in
the direction of the postern.

“Sefior Caballero,” he croaked, “I pray you to consider this
house your own. My servants are yours.”

Within was a gravel yard, shut in by portentous lead-white
house-sides with black window holes. Under each row of windows
was a vast vaulted tunnel, caged with iron bars, for all the world
like beasts’ dens. It being day, the beasts were out and lounging
about the patio. They had an effect of infinite tranquillity, as if
they were ladies and gentlemen parading in a Sunday avenue.
Perhaps twenty of them, in snowy white shirts and black velvet
knee-breeches, strutted like pigeons in a knot, some with one
woman on the arm, some with two. Bundles of variegated rags lay
against the walls, as if they were sweepings. Well, they were the
sweepings of Havana jail. The men in white and black were the
great thieves . . . and there were children, too—the place was
the city orphanage. For the fifth part of a second my advent
made no difference. ‘Then, at the far end, one of the men in
black and white separated himself, and came swiftly to me across
the sunny patio. The others followed slowly, with pea-fowl steps,
their women hanging to them and whispering. ‘The bundles of
rags rose up towards me; others slunk furtively out of the barred
dens. The man who was approaching had the head of a Julius

375

376 ROMANCE

Cesar of fifty, for all the world as if he had stolen a bust and
endowed it with yellow skin and stubby gray and silver hair. He
saluted me with intense gravity, and an imperial glance of yellow
eyes along a hooked nose. His linen was the most spotless broid-
ered and embossed stuff; from the crimson scarf round his waist
protruded the shagreen and silver handle of a long dagger. He
said:

“‘Sefior, I have the honor to salute you. I am Crisostomo
Garcia. I ask the courtesy of your trousers.’

I did not answer him. I did not see what he wanted with my
trousers, which weren’t anyway as valuable as his own. The
others were closing in on me like a solid wall. I leant back
against the gate; I was not frightened, but I was mightily excited.
The man like Czsar looked fiercely at me, swayed a long way
back on his haunches, and imperiously motioned the crowd to
recede.

“‘ Senior Inglesito,” he said, “ the gift I have the honor to ask of
you is the price of my protection. Without it these, my brothers,
will tear you limb from limb, there will nothing of you remain.”

His brothers set up a stealthy, sinister growl, that went round
among the heads like the mutter of an obscene echo among the
mountain-tops. I wondered whether this, perhaps, was the man
who, O’Brien said, would put a knife in my back. I hadn’t any
knife; I might knock the fellow’s teeth down his throat, though.

The alcayde thrust his immense hat, blood-red face, and long,
ragged, silver locks out of the little door. His features were
convulsed with indignation. He had been whispering with the
Civil Guard.

“Are you mad, gentlemen?” he said. ‘‘ Do you wish to visit
hell before your times? Do you know who the sefior is? Did you
ever hear of Carlos el Demonio? This is the Inglesito of Rio.
Medio!”

It was plain that my deeds, such as they were, reported by
O’Brien spies, by the Lugarefios, by all sorts of credulous gos-
sipers, had got me the devil of a reputation in the patio of the jail.
Men detached themselves from the crowd, and went running
about to announce my arrival. The alcayde drew his long body
into the patio, and turned to lock the little door with an immense

PART FIFTH 377

key. In the crowd all sorts of little movements happened. Women
crossed themselves, and furtively thrust pairs of crooked, skinny,
brown, black-nailed fingers in my direction. The man like Cesar
said:

“T ask your pardon, Sefior Caballero. I did not know. How
could I tell? You are free of all the patios in this land.”

The tall alcayde finished grinding the immense key in the lock,
and touched me on the arm.

“Tf the sefior will follow me,” he said. “I will do the honors
of this humble mansion, and indicate a choice of rooms where he
may be free from the visits of these gentry.”

We went up steps, and through long, shadowy corridors, with
here and there a dark, lounging figure, like a stag seen in the dim
aisles of a wood. ‘The alcayde threw open a door.

The room was like a blazing oblong box, filled with light, but
without window or chimney. Two men were fencing in the illu-
mination of some twenty candles stuck all round the mildewed
white walls on lumps of clay. There was a blaze of silver things,
like an altar of a wealthy church, from a black, carved table in
the far corner. The two men, in shirts and breeches, revolved
round each other, their rapiers clinking, their left arms scarved,
holding buttoned daggers. The alcayde proclaimed:

“Don Vincente Salazar, I have the honor to announce an
English sefior.”

The man with his face to me tossed his rapier impatiently
into a corner. He was a plump, dark Cuban, with a brooding
truculence. The other faced round quickly. His cheeks shone
in the candle-light like polished yellow leather, his eyes were
narrow slits, his face lugubrious. He scrutinized me intently, then
drawled:

“My! You? ... Hang me if I didn’t think it would be
you!”

He had the air of surveying a monstrosity, and pulled the neck
of his dirty print shirt open, panting. He slouched out into the
corridor, and began whispering eagerly to the alcayde. The
little Cuban glowered at me; I said I had the honor to salute
him.

He muttered something contemptuous between his teeth. Well,

378 ROMANCE

if he didn’t want to talk to me, I didn’t want to talk to him. It
had struck me that the tall, sallow man was undoubtedly the
second mate of the Thames. Nichols, the real Nikola el Escoces!
The Cuban grumbled suddenly:

“You, sefior, are without doubt one of the spies of that friend
of the priests, that O’Brien. Tell him to beware—that I bid him
beware. I, Don Vincente Salazar de Valdepefias y Forliy .. .”

I remembered the name; he was once the suitor of Seraphina
—the man O’Brien had put out of the way. He continued with
a grotesque frown of portentous significance:

“To-morrow I leave this place. And your compatriot is very
much afraid, sefior. Let him fear! Let him fear! But a
thousand spies should not save him.”

The tall alcayde came hurriedly back and stood bowing. be-
tween us. He apologized abjectly to the Cuban for introducing me
upon him. But the room was the best in the place at the disposal
of the prisoners of the Juez O’Brien. And I was a noted
caballero. Heaven knows what I had not done in Rio Medio.
Burnt, slain, ravished. . . . The Sefior Juez was understood
to be much incensed against me. The gloomy Cuban at once
rushed upon me, as if he would have taken me into his arms.

“The Inglesito of Rio Medio!” he said. ‘‘ Ha, ha! Much
have I heard of you. Much of the sefior’s valiance! Many tales!
That foul eater of the carrion of the priests wishes your life! Ah,
but let him beware! I shall save you, sefior—I, Don Vincente
Salazar.”

He presented me with the room—a remarkably bare place but
for his properties: silver branch candlesticks, a silver chafing-dish —
as large as a basin. They might have been chased by Cellini—one
used to find things like that in Cuba in those days, and Salazar
was the person to have them. Afterwards, at the time of the first
insurrection, his eight-mule harness was sold for four thousand
pounds in Paris—by reason of the gold and pearls upon it. The
atmosphere, he explained, was fetid, but his man was coming to
burn sandal-wood and beat the air with fans.

“And to-morrow!” he said, his eyes rolling. Suddenly he
stopped. “ Sefior,” he said, “is it true that my venerated friend,
my more than father, has been murdered—at the instigation of

PART FIFTH 379

that fiend? Is it true that the sefiorita has disappeared? These
tales are told.”

I said it was very true.

“They shall be avenged,” he declared, “to-morrow! I shall
seek out the sefiorita. I shall find her. I shall find her! For
me she was destined by my venerable friend.”

He snatched a black velvet jacket from the table and put it on.

“Afterwards, sefior, you shall relate. Have no fear. I shall
save you. I shall save all men oppressed by this scourge of the
land. For the moment afford me the opportunity to meditate.”
He crossed his arms, and dropped his round head. ‘ Alas, yes! ”
he meditated.

Suddenly he waved towards the door. ‘‘ Sefior,” he said swiftly,
“T must have air; I stifle. Come with me to the corridor. . . .”

He went towards the window giving on to the patio; he stood
in the shadow, his arms folded, his head hanging dejectedly. At
the moment it grew suddenly. dark, as if a veil had been thrown
over a lamp. ‘The sun had set outside the walls. A drum began
to beat. Down below in the obscurity the crowd separated into
three strings and moved slowly towards the barren tunnels.
Under our feet the white shirts disappeared; the ragged crowd
gravitated to the left; the small children strung into the square
cage-door. ‘The drum beat again and the crowd hurried. ‘Then
there was a clang of closing grilles and lights began to show behind
the bars from deep recesses. In a little time there was a repulsive
hash of heads and limbs to be seen under the arches vanishing a
long way within, and a little light washed across the gravel of
the patio from within.

“ Sefior,’ the Cuban said suddenly, “I will pronounce his
panegyric. He was a man of a great gentleness, of an inevitable
nobility, of an invariable courtesy. Where, in this degenerate age,
shall we find the like!”’ He stopped to breathe a sound of intense
" exasperation.

“When I think of these Irish, ....” he said. ‘Of that
O’Brien. . . .” A servant was arranging the shining room
that we had left. Salazar interrupted himself to give some orders
about a banquet, then returned to me. “I tell you I am here for
introducing my knife to the spine of some sort of Madrid embus-

380 ROMANCE

tero, a man who was insolent to my amiga Clara. Do you be-
lieve that for that this O’Brien, by the influence of the priests
whose soles he licks with his tongue, has had me inclosed for
many months? Because he feared me! Aha! I was about to
expose him to the noble don who is now dead! I was about to
wed the sefiorita who has disappeared. But to-morrow... I
shall expose his intrigue to the Captain-General. You, sefior, shal
be my witness! I extend my protection to you. . . .” He
crossed his arms and spoke with much deliberation. “ Sefior, this
Irishman incommodes me, Don Vincente Salazar de Valdepefias
y Forli. .. .” He nodded his head expressively. “ Sefor, we
offered these Irish the shelter of our robe for that your Govern-
ment was making martyrs of them who were good Christians, and
it behooves us to act in despite of your Government, who are here-
tics and not to be tolerated upon God’s Christian earth. But,
Sefior, if they incommoded your Government as they do us, I do
not wonder that there was a desire to remove them. Senor, the life
of that man is not worth the price of eight mules, which is the
price I have paid for my release. I might walk free at this mo-
ment, but it is not fitting that I should slink away under cover of
darkness. I shall go out in the daylight with my carriage. And
I will have an offering to show my friends who, like me, are in-
commoded by this... .” The man was a monomaniac; but it
struck me that, if I had been O’Brien, I should have felt uncom-
fortable.

In the dark of the corridor a long shape appeared, lounging.
‘The Cuban beside me started hospitably forward.

“Vamos,” he said briskly; ‘“‘ to the banquet. . . .’. He waved
his hand towards the shining door and stood aside. We entered.

The other man was undoubtedly the Nova Scotian mate of the
Thames, the man who had dissuaded me from following Carlos on
the day we sailed into Kingston Harbor. He was chewing a tooth-
pick, and at the ruminant motion of his knife-jaws I seemed to see
him, sitting naked to the waist in his bunk, instead of upright
there in red trousers and a blue shirt—an immense lank-length of
each. I pieced his history together in a sort of flash. He was the
true Nikola el Escoces; his name was Nichols, and he came from
Nova Scotia. He had been the chief of O’Brien’s Lugarefos. He

PART FIFTH 381

surveyed me now with a twinkle in his eyes, his yellow jaws as
shiny-shaven as of old; his arms as much like a semaphore. He
said mockingly:

“So you went there, after all?”

But the Cuban was pressing us towards his banquet; there was
gaspacho in silver plates, and a man in livery holding something
in a napkin. It worried me. We surveyed each other in silence.
I wondered what Nichols knew; what it would be safe to tell
him; how much he could help me? One or other of these men
undoubtedly might. ‘The Cuban was an imbecile; but he might
have some influence—and if he really were going out on the
morrow, and really did go to the Captain-General, he certainly
could further his own revenge on O’Brien by helping me... .
But as for Nichols... .

Salazar began to tell a long, exaggerated story about his cook,
whom he had imported from Paris.

“Think,” he said; “I bring the fool two thousand miles—and
then—not even able to begin on a land-crab. A fool!”

The Nova Scotian cast an uninterested side glance at him, and
said in English, which Salazar did not understand:

“So you went there, after all? And now he’s got you.” I
did not answer him. “ I know all about yeh,” he added.

“Tt’s more than I do about yeh,” I said.

He rose and suddenly jerked the door open, peered on each side
of the corridor, and then sat down again.

“T’m not afraid to tell,” he said defiantly. “I’m not afraid
of anything. I’m safe.”

The Cuban said to me in Spanish: “ This sefior is my friend.
Everyone who hates that devil is my friend.”

“T’m safe,’ Nichols repeated. ‘‘I know too much about our
friend the raparee.” He lowered his voice. ‘‘ They say you’re
to be given up for piracy, eh?’’ His eyes had an extraordinary
anxious leer. ‘You are now, eh? For how much? Can’t you
tell a man? We’re in the same boat! I kin help yeh! ”

Salazar accidentally knocked a silver goblet off the table and,
at the sound, Nichols sprang half off his chair. He glared in a
wild scare around him, then grasped at a flagon of aguardiente
and drank.

382 ROMANCE

“Tm not afraid of any damn thing,” he said. “I’ve got a
hold on that man. He dursen’t give me up. I kin see! He’s
going to give you up and say you're responsible for it all.”

‘“‘T don’t know what he’s going to do,” I answered.

“Will you not, sefior,” Salazar said suddenly, “ relate, if you
can without distress, the heroic death of that venerated man?”

I glanced involuntarily at Nichols. “The distress,” I said,
“would be very great. I was Don Balthasar’s kinsman. ‘The
Sefior O’Brien had a great fear of my influence in the Casa. It
was in trying to take me away that Don Balthasar, who defended
me, was slain by the Lugarefos of O’Brien.”

Salazar said, ‘‘ Aha! Aha! We are kindred spirits. Hated
and loved by the same souls. This fiend, sefior. And then. .. .”
- “T escaped by sea—in an open boat, in the confusion. When I
reached Havana, the Juez had me arrested.”

Salazar raised both hands; his gestures, made for large, grave
men, were comic in him. ‘They reduced Spanish manners to
absurdity. He said:

“That man dies. That man dies. To-morrow I go to the
Captain-General. He shall hear this story of yours, senor. He
shall know of these machinations which bring honest men to this
place. We are a band of brothers. . . .”

“That’s what I say.” Nichols leered at me. “ We're all in
the same boat.”

I expect he noticed that I wasn’t moved by his declaration. He
said, still in English:

“ Let us be open. Let’s have a council of war. This Juez
hates me because I wouldn’t fire on my own countrymen.” He
glanced furtively at me. “‘I wouldn’t,” he asserted; ‘‘ he wanted
me to fire into their boats; but I wouldn’t. Don’t you believe the
tales they tell about me! They tell worse about you. Who
says I would fire on my countrymen? Where’s the man who says
it?’ He had been drinking more brandy and glared ferociously
at me. ‘‘ None of your tricks, my hearty,” he said. ‘ None of
your getting out and spreading tales. O’Brien’s my friend; he’ll
never give me up. He dursen’t. I know too much. You’re a
pirate! No doubt it was you who fired into them boats. By God,
I'll be witness against you if they give me up. I'll show you up.”

PART FIFTH 383

All the while the little Cuban talked swiftly and with a satur-
nine enthusiasm. He passed the wine rapidly.

“My own countrymen!” Nichols shouted. ‘‘ Never! .I shot
a Yankee lieutenant—Allen he was—with my own hand. That’s
another thing. I’m not a man to trifle with. No, sir. Don’t you
try it. ... Why, I’ve papers that would hang O’Brien. I sent
them home to Halifax. I know a trick worth his. By God, let
him try it! Let him only try it. He dursen’t give me up... .”

The man in livery came in to snuff the candles. Nichols sprang
from his seat in a panic and drew his knife with frantic haste.
He continued, glaring at me from the wall, the knife in his hand:

“ Don’t you dream of tricks. I’ve cut more throats than you’ve
kissed gals in your little life.”

Salazar himself drew an immense pointed knife with a sha-
green hilt. He kissed it rapturously.

“ Aha! ... Aha!” he said, ‘‘ bear this kiss into his ribs at
the back. His eyes glistened with this mania. “I swear it; when
I next see this dog; this friend of the priests.” He threw the knife
on the table. ‘“‘ Look,” he said, ‘“‘ was ever steel truer or more
thirsty?”

“Don’t you make no mistake,’ Nichols continued to me.
“Don’t you think to presume. O’Brien’s my friend. I’m here
snug and out of the way of the old fool of an admiral. That’s
why he’s kept waiting off the Morro. When he goes, I walk out
free. Don’t you try to frighten me. I’m not a man to be fright-
ened.”

Salazar bubbled: “‘ Ah, but now the wine flows and is red. We
are a band of brothers, each loving the other. Brothers, let us
drink.”

The air of close confinement, the blaze, the feel of the jail,
pressed upon me, and I felt sore, suddenly, at having eaten and
drunk with those two. The idea of Seraphina, asleep perhaps,
crying perhaps, something pure and distant and very blissful, came
in upon me irresistibly.

The little Cuban said, ““ We have had a very delightful con-
versation. It is very plain this O’Brien must die.”

I rose to my feet. ‘‘ Gentlemen,” I said in Spanish, “I am
very weary; I will go and sleep in the corridor.”

”

384 ROMANCE

The Cuban sprang towards me with an immense anxiety of
hospitableness. I was to sleep on his couch, the couch of cloth of
gold. It was impossible, it was insulting, that I should think of
sleeping in the corridor. He thrust me gently down upon it,
making with his plump hands the motions of smoothing it to
receive me. I laid down and turned my face to the wall.

It wasn’t possible to sleep, even though the little Cuban, with
a tender solicitude, went round the walls blowing out the candles.
He might be useful to me, might really explain matters to the
Captain-General, or might even, as a last resource, take a letter
from me to the British Consul. But I should have to be alone
with him. Nichols was an abominable scoundrel; bloodthirsty to
the defenseless; a liar; craven before the ghost of a threat. No
doubt O’Brien did not want to give him up. Perhaps he had
papers. And no doubt, once he could find a trace of Seraphina’s
whereabouts, O’Brien would give me up. All I could do was to
hope for a gain of time. And yet, if I gained time, it could only
mean that I should in the end be given up to the admiral.

And Seraphina’s whereabouts. It came over me lamentably
that I myself did not know. The Lion might have sailed. It was
possible. She might be at sea. Then, perhaps, my only chance of
ever seeing her again lay in my being given up to the admiral, to
stand in England a trial, perhaps for piracy, perhaps for treason.
I might meet her only in England, after many years of imprison-
ment. It wasn’t possible. I would not believe in the possibility.
How I loved her! How wildly, how irrationally—this woman of
another race, of another world, bound to me by sufferings together,
by joys together. Irrationally! Looking at the matter now, the,
reason is plain enough. Before then I had not lived. I had only
waited—for her and for what she stood for. It was in my blood,
in my race, in my tradition, in my training. We, all of us for
generations, had made for efficiency, for drill, for restraint. Our
Romance was just this very Spanish contrast, this obliquity of
vision, this slight tilt of the convex mirror that shaped the
same world so differently to onlookers at different points of its
circle.

I could feel a little of it even then, when there was only the
merest chance of my going back to England and getting back

PART FIFTH 385

towards our old position on the rim of the mirror. The de-
viousness, the wayward passion, even the sempiternal abuses of
the land were already beginning to take the aspect of something
like quaint impotence. It was charm that, now I was on the road
away, was becoming apparent. “The inconveniences of life, the
physical discomforts, the smells of streets, the heat, dropped into
the background. I felt that I did not want to go away, irrevocably
from a land sanctioned by her presence, her young life. I turned
uneasily to the other side. At the heavy black table, in the light
of a single candle, the Cuban and the Nova-Scotian were dis-
cussing, their heads close together.

“T tell you no,” Nichols was saying in a fluent, abominable,
literal translation into Spanish. ‘‘ Take the knife so. . . thumb
upwards. Stab down in the soft between the neck and the
shoulder-blade. You get right into the lungs with the point.
I’ve tried it: ten times. Never stick the back. The chances are
he moves, and you hit a bone. There are no bones there. It’s
the way they kill pigs in New Jersey.”

The Cuban bent his brows as if he were reflecting over a chess-
board. “Ma...” he pondered. His knife was lying on the
table. He unsheathed it, then got up, and moved behind the seated
Nova Scotian.

“You say ... there?” he asked, pressing his little finger at
the base of Nichols’ skinny column of a neck. “ And then...”
He measured the length of the knife on Nichols’s back twice with
elaborate care, breathing through his nostrils. Then he said with
a convinced, musing air, “It is true. It would go down into the
lungs.”

“ And there are arteries and things,”’ Nichols said.

“Yes, yes,” the Cuban answered, sheathing the knife and
thrusting it into his belt.

“With a knife that length it’s perfect.” . Nichols waved his
shadowy hand towards Salazar’s scarf. Salazar moved off a little.

“I see the advantages,” he said. “‘ No crying out, because of
the blood in the lungs. I thank you, Sefior Escoces.”

Nichols rose, lurching to his full height, and looked in my
direction. I closed my eyes. I did not wish him to talk to me.
I heard him say:

386 ROMANCE

“Well, hasta mas ver. I shall get away from here. Good-
night.” .

He swayed an immense shadow through the door. Salazar took
the candle and followed him into the corridor. .
~ Yes, that was it, why she was so great a part, a whole wall, a
whole beam of my life’s house. I saw her suddenly in the black-
ness, her full red lips, her quivering nostrils, the curve of her
breasts, her lithe movements from the hips, the way she set her
feet down, the white flower waxen in the darkness of her hair,
and the robin-wing flutter-of her lids over her gray eyes when she
smiled. I moved convulsively in my intense desire. I would have
given my soul, my share of eternity, my honor, only to see that
flutter of the lids over the shining gray eyes. I never felt I was
beneath the imponderable pressure of a prison’s wall till then.
She was infinite miles away; I could not even imagine what inani-
mate things surrounded her. She must be talking to someone else;
fluttering her lids like that. I recognized with a physical agony
that was more than jealousy how slight was my hold upon
her.

It was not in her race, in her blood as in mine, to love me and my
type. She had lived all her life in the middle of Romance, and
the very fire and passion of her South must make me dim prose
to her. I remember the flicker of Salazar’s returning candle,
cast in lines like an advancing scythe across the two walls from
the corridor. I slept.

I had the feeling of appalled horror suddenly invading my
sleep; a vast voice seemed to be exclaiming:

“Tell me where she is! ”

I looked at the glowing horn of a lanthorn. It was O’Brien
who held it. He stood over me, very somber.

“Tell me where she is,” he said, the moment my eyes opened. -

I said, “ She’s . . . she’s I don’t know.”

It appalls me even now to think how narrow was my escape. It
was only because I had gone to sleep in the thought that I did not
know, that I answered that I did not know. Ah—he was a cun-
ning devil! ‘To suddenly wake one; to get one’s thoughts before
one had had time to think! I lay looking at him, shivering. I
couldn’t even see much of his face.

PART FIFTH 387

“Where is she?” he said again. “Where? Dead? Dead?
God have mercy on your soul if the child is dead! ”

I was still trembling. If I had told him!—I could hardly
believe I had not. He continued bending over me with an atti-
tude that hideously mocked solicitude.

“Where is she?” he asked again.

“Ransack the island,” I said. He glared at me, lifting the
lamp. ‘ The whole earth, if you like.”

He ground his teeth, bending very low over me; then stood
up, raising his head into the shadow above the lamp. ©

“What do I care for all the admirals?’ he was speaking to
himself. “ No ship shall leave Havana till... .” He groaned.
I heard him slap his forehead, and say distractedly, ‘‘ But perhaps
she is not in a ship.”

There was a silence in which I heard him breathe heavily,
and then he amazed me by saying:

“ Have pity.”

I laughed, lying on my back. “On you!”

He bent down. “ Fool! on yourself.”

A vast and towering shadow ran along the wall. There wasn’t
a sound. ‘The face of Salazar appeared behind him, and an up-
lifted hand grasping a knife. O’Brien saw the horror in my eyes.
I gasped to him: ‘‘ Look. . . .” and before he could move the
knife went softly home between neck and shoulder. Salazar
glided to the door and turned to wave his hand at me. O’Brien’s
lips were pressed tightly together, the handle of the knife was
against his ear, the lanthorn hung at the end of his rigid arm for
amoment. As he lowered it, the blood spurted from his shoulder
as if from a burst stand-pipe, only black and warm. It fell over
my face, over my hands, everywhere. For a minute of eternity
his agonized eyes searched my features, as if to discern whether I
had connived, whether I had condoned.

I had started up, my face coming right against his. I felt an
immense horror. What did it mean? What had he done? He
had been such a power for so long, so inevitably, over my whole
life that I could not even begin to understand that this was not
some new subtle villainy of his. He shook his head slowly, his ear-
disturbing the knife.

388 ROMANCE

Then he turned jerkily on his heel, the lanthorn swinging round
and leaving me in his shadow. ‘There were ten paces to reach
the door. It was like the finish of a race whether he would cover
the remaining seven after the first three steps. The dangling
lanthorn shed small patches of light through the holes in the metal -
top, like sunlight through leaves, upon the gloom of the remote
ceiling. At the fifth step he pressed his hand spasmodically to
his mouth; at the sixth he wavered to one side. I made a sudden
motion as if to save him from falling. He was dying! He was
dying! I hardly realized what it meant. This immense weight
was being removed from me. I had no need to fear him any more.
I couldn’t understand, I could only look. This was his passing.
This. >.

He sank, knelt down, placing the lanthorn on the floor. He
covered his face with his hands and began to cough incessantly,
like a man dying of consumption. The glowing top of the lanthorn
hissed and sputtered out in little sharp blows, like hammer strokes
. ... Carlos had coughed like that. Carlos was dead. Now
O’Brien! He was going. I should escape. It was all over. Was
it all over? He bowed stiffly forward, placing his hands on the
stones, then lay over on his side with his face to the light, his
eyes glaring at it. I sat motionless, watching him. ‘The lanthorn
lit the carved leg of the black table and a dusty circle of the flags.
The spurts of blood from his shoulder grew less long in answer to
the pulsing of his heart; his fists unclenched, he drew his legs up to
his body, then sank down. His eyes looked suddenly at mine and,
as the features slowly relaxed, the smile seemed to come back,
enigmatic, round his mouth.

He was dead; he was gone; I was free! He would never
know where she was; never! He had gone, with the question on
his lips; with the agony of uncertainty in his eyes. From the
door came an immense, grotesque, and horrible chuckle.

“Aha! Aha! I have saved you, sefior, I have protected you.
We are as brothers.”

Against the tenuous blue light of the dawn Salazar was gesticu-
lating in the doorway. I felt a sudden repulsion; a feeling of
intense disgust. O’Brien lying there, I almost wished alive again
—I wanted to have him again, rather than that I should have been

PART FIFTH 389

relieved of him by that atrocious murder. I sat looking at both of
them.

Saved! By that lunatic? I suddenly appreciated the agony
of mind that alone could have brought O’Brien, the cautious, the
all-seeing, into this place—to ask me a question that for him was
answered now. Answered for him more than for me.

Where was Seraphina? Where? How should I come to her?
O’Brien was dead. And I... . Could I walk out of this place
and go to her? O’Brien was dead. ButI...

I suddenly realized that now I was the pirate Nikola el Escoces
—that now he was no more there, nothing could save me from
being handed over to the admiral. Nothing.

Salazar outside the door began to call boastfully towards the
sound of approaching footsteps.

“ Aha! Aha! Come all of you! See what I have done!
Come, Sefior Alcayde! Come, brave soldiers . . .”

£

In that way died this man whose passion had for so long hung
- over my life like a shadow. Looking at the matter now, I am,
perhaps, glad that he fell neither by my hand nor in my quarrel.
I assuredly had injured him the first ; I had come upon his ground;
I had thwarted him; I had been a heavy weight at a time when
his fortunes had been failing. Failing they undoubtedly were.
~ He had run his course too far.

And, if his death removed him out of my path, the legacy of
his intrigue caused me suffering enough. Had he lived, there is
no knowing what he might have done. He was bound to deliver
someone to the British—either myself or Nichols. Perhaps, at
the last moment, he would have kept me in Havana. There is
no saying.

Undoubtedly he had not wished to deliver Nichols; either
because he really knew too much, or because he had scruples.
Nichols had certainly been faithful to him. And, with his fine
irony, it was certainly delightful to him to think that I should die
a felon’s death in England. For those reasons he had identified
me with Nikola el Escoces, intending to give up whichever suited
him at the last moment.

Now that was settled for him and for me. The delivery was

390 ROMANCE

to take place at dawn, and O’Brien not being to be found, the
old Judge of the First Instance had been sent to identify the pris-
- oner. He selected me, whom, of course, he recognized. ‘There
was no question of Nichols, who had been imprisoned on a charge
of theft trumped up by O’Brien. I

Salazar, whether he would have gone to the Captain-General
or not, was now entirely useless. He was retained to answer the
charge of murder. And to any protestations I could make, the
old Juez was entirely deaf.

“The sefior must make representations to his own auton
he said. ‘I have warrant for what I have done.”

It was impossible to expose O’Brien to him. ‘The soldiers “
the escort, in the dawn before the prison gates, simply laughed at
me.

They marched me down through the gray mists, to the water’s
edge. Two soldiers held my arms; O’Brien’s blood was drying
on my face and on my clothes. I was, even to myself, a miserable
object. Among the negresses on the slimy boat-steps a thick,
short man was asking questions. He opened amazed eyes at the
sight of me. It was Williams—the Lion was not yet gone then.
If he spoke to me, or gave token of connection with Seraphina,
the Spaniards would understand. ‘They would take her from
him certainly; perhaps immure her in a convent. And now that—
I was bound irrevocably for England, she must go, too. He was
shouldering his way towards my guards. _

“Silence!” I shouted, without looking at him. ‘Go away,
make sail.:,. : Tell Sebright... ..”

My guards seemed to think I had gone mad; they laid hands
upon me. I didn’t struggle, and we passed down towards the
landing steps, brushing Williams aside. He stood perturbedly,
gazing after me; then I saw him asking questions of a civil guard.
A man-of-war’s boat, the ensign trailing in the glassy water, the
glazed hats of the seamen bobbing like clockwork, was flying
towards us. Here was England! Here was home! I should
have to clear myself of felony, to strain every nerve and cheat the
gallows. If only Williams understood, if only he did not make
a fool of himself. I couldn’t see him any more; a jabbering
crowd all round us was being kept at a distance by the muskets

PART Cree Pit 391

of the soldiers. My only chance was Sebright’s intelligence. He
might prevent Williams making a fool of himself. The com-
mander of the guard said to the lieutenant from the flagship, who
had landed, attended by the master-at-arms:

“I have the honor to deliver to your worship’s custody the
prisoner promised to his excellency the English admiral. Here
are the papers disclosing his crimes to the justice. I beg for a
receipt.”

A shabby escrivano from the prison advanced bowing, with an
inkhorn, shaking a wet goose-quill. A guardia civil offered his
back. The lieutenant signed a paper hastily, then looking hard
at me, gave the order:

“ Master-at-arms, handcuff one of the prisoner’s hands to your
own wrist. He is a desperate character.”

CHAPTER III

HE first decent word I had spoken to me after that for

months came from my turnkey at Newgate. It was

when he welcomed me back from my examination
before the Thames Court magistrate. [he magistrate, a bad-
tempered man, snuffy, with red eyes, and the air of being a piece
of worn and dirty furniture of his court, had snapped at me
when I tried to speak:

“ Keep your lies for the Admiralty eee) I’ve only time to
commit you. Damn your Spaniards; why can’t they translate
_ their own papers;”’ had signed something with a squeaky quill,
tossed it to his clerk, and grunted, ‘‘ Next case.”

I had gone back to Newgate.

The turnkey, a man with the air of an innkeeper, bandy-legged,
with a bulbous, purple-veined nose and watering eyes, slipped out
of the gatehouse door, whilst the great, hollow-sounding gate still
shook behind me. He said:

“Tf you hurries up you'll see a bit of life. . . . Do you good.
Condemned sermon. Being preached in the chapel now; sheriffs
and all. They swing to-morrow—three of them. Quick with
the stumps.’

He hurried me over the desolate moss-greeny cobbles of the
great solitary yard into a square, tall, bare, white-washed place.
Already from the outside one caught a droning voice. There
might have been three hundred people there, boxed off in pews,
with turnkeys at each end. A vast king’s arms, a splash of red
and blue gilt sprawled above a two-tiered pulpit that was like the
trunk of a large broken tree. The turnkey pulled my hat off,
and nudged me into a box beside the door.

“Kneel down,” he whispered hoarsely.

I knelt. A man with a new wig was droning out words,
waving his hands now and then from the top of the tall pulpit.
Beneath him a smaller man in an old wig was dozing, his head

392

PART FIFTH 393

bent forward. ‘The place was dirty, and ill-lighted by the tall,
grimy windows, heavily barred. A pair of candles flickered beside
the preacher’s right arm. ....

“They that go down to the sea in ships, my poor brethren,”
he droned, “lying under the shadow . . .”

He directed his hands towards a tall deal box painted black,
isolated in the center of the lower floor. A man with a red head
sat in it, his arms folded; another had his arms covering his head,
which leant abjectly forward on the rail in front. There were
large rusty gyves upon his wrists.

“But observe, my poor friends,” the chaplain droned on, “ the
psalmist saith, ‘ At the last He shall bring them unto the desired
haven.” Now. . ..”:

The turnkey whispered suddenly into my ear: “ Them’s the
condemned he’s preaching at, them in the black pew. See Roguey
Cullen wink at the woman prisoners up there in the gallery... .
Him with the red hair. . . . All swings to-morrow.”

“ After they have staggered and reeled to and fro, and been
amazed ... observe. After they have been tempted; even after
they have fallen. . . .”

The sheriffs had their eyes decorously closed. The clerk
reached up from below the preacher, and snuffed one of the
candles. “The preacher paused to rearrange his shining wig.
Little clouds of powder flew out where he touched it. He struck
his purple velvet cushion, and continued:

“ At the last, I say, He shall bring them to the haven they had
desired.” -

A jarring shriek rose out of the black pew, and an insensate
jangling of irons rattled against the hollow wood. ‘The ironed
man, whose head had been hidden, was writhing in an epileptic
fit. The governor began signaling to the jailers, and the whole
dismal assembly rose to its feet, and craned to get a sight. The
jailers began hurrying them out of the building. The red-headed
man was crouching in the far corner of the black box.

The turnkey caught the end of my sleeve, and hurried me out
of the door.

“Come away,” he said. “‘ Come out of it. . . . Damn my good
nature.”

394 ROMANCE

We went swiftly through the tall, gloomy, echoing stone pas-
sages. All the time there was the noise of the prisoners being
marshaled somewhere into their distant yards and cells. We
went across the bottom of a well, where the weeping December
light struck ghastly down on to the stones, into a sort of rabbit-
warren of black passages and descending staircases, a horror of
cold, solitude, and night. Iron door after iron door clanged to
behind us in the stony blackness. After an interminable travers-
ing, the turnkey, still with his hand on my sleeve, jerked me into
my familiar cell. I hadn’t thought to be glad to get back to
that dim, frozen, damp-chilled little hole; with its hateful stone
walls, stone ceiling, stone floor, stone bed-slab, and stone table;
its rope mat, foul stable-blanket, its horrible sense of eternal
burial, out of sound, out of sight under a mined mountain of
black stones. It was so tiny that the turnkey, entering after me,
seemed to be pressed close up to my chest, and so dark that I could
not see the color of the dirty hair that fell matted from the bald
patch on the top of his skull; so familiar that I knew the feel of
every little worming of rust on the iron candlestick. He wiped
his face with a brown rag of handkerchief, and said:

“Curse me if ever I go into that place again.” After a time
he added: ‘‘ Unless ’tis a matter of duty.”

I didn’t say anything; my nerves were still jangling to that
shrieking, and to the clang of the iron doors that had closed be-
hind me. I had an irresistible impulse to get hold of the iron
candlestick and smash it home through the skull of the turnkey—
as I had done to the men who had killed Seraphina’s father . . .
to kill this man, then to creep along the black passages and
murder man after man beside those iron doors until I got to the
open air.

He began again. “ You'd think we'd get used to it—you’d
think we would—but ’tis a strain for us. You never knows what
the prisoners will do at a scene like that there. It drives ’em mad.
Look at this scar. Machell the forger done that for me, ’fore
he was condemned, after a sermon like that—a quiet, gentlemanly
man, much like you. Lord, yes, ’tis a strain. . . .” He paused,
still wiping his face, then went on. “ And I swear that when I
sees them men sit there in that black pew, an’ hev heard the

PART FIFTH 395

hammers going clack, clack on the scaffolding outside, and knew
that they hadn’t no more chance than you have to get out of
there . . .” He pointed his short thumb towards the hand-
kerchief of an opening, where the little blur of blue light wavered
through the two iron frames crossed in the nine feet of well.
“Lord, you never gets used to it. You wants them to escape;
*tis in the air through the whole prison, even the debtors. I tells
_ myself again and again, ‘ You’re a fool for your pains.’ But it’s
the same with the others—my mates. You can’t get it out of
your mind. ‘That little kid now. I’ve seen children swing; but
that little kid—as sure to swing as what... as what you
arGs ow

“You think I am going to swing? ”’ I asked.

I didn’t want to kill him any more; I wanted too much to
hear him talk. I hadn’t heard anything for months and months
of solitude, of darkness—on board the admiral’s ship, stranded in
the guardship at Plymouth, bumping round the coast, and now
_here in Newgate. And it had been darkness all the time. Jove!
That Cuban time, with its movements, its pettiness, its intrigue,
its warmth, even its villainies showed plainly enough in the chill
of that blackness. It had been romance, that life.

Little, and far away, and irrevocably done with, it showed all
golden. ‘There wasn’t any romance where I lay then; and there
had been irons on my wrists; gruff hatred, the darkness, and
always despair.

On board the flagship coming home I had been chained down
in the cable-tier—a place where I could feel every straining of
the great ship. Once these had risen to a pandemonium, a fright-
ful tumult. There was a great gale outside. A sailor came down
with a lanthorn, and tossed my biscuit to me.

“You d d pirate,” he said, “ maybe it’s you saving us from
drowning.”

“Is the gale very bad?” I had called.

He muttered—and the fact that he spoke to me at all showed
how great the strain of the weather must have been to wring any
words out of him:

“ Bad—there’s a large Indiaman gone. We saw her one

b

minute and then .:. .” He went away, muttering.

406 ~ ROMANCE

And suddenly the thought had come to me, What if the India-
man were the Lion—the Lion with Seraphina on board? ‘The
man would not speak to me when he came again. No one would
speak to me; I was a pirate who had fired on his own country-
men. And the thought had pursued me right into Newgate—if
she were dead; if I had taken her from that security, from that
peace, to end there. . . . And to end myself.

“Swing!” the turnkey said; “you'll swing right enough.”
He slapped the great key on his flabby hand. “ You can tell
that by the signs. You, being an Admiralty case, ought to have
been in the Marshalsea. And you’re ordered solitary cell, and
I’m tipped the straight wink against your speaking a blessed word
to a blessed soul. Why don’t they let you see an attorney? Why?
Because they mean you to swing.”

I said, “‘ Never mind that. Have you heard of a ship called
the Lion? Can you find out about her?”

He shook his head cunningly, and did not answer. If the Lion
had been here, I must have heard. ‘They couldn’t have left me
here.

I said, ‘‘ For God’s sake find out. Get a shipping gazette.”

He affected not to hear.

“’There’s money in plenty,” I said.

He winked ponderously and began again. ‘‘Oh, you’ll swing |
all right. A man with nothing against him has a chance; with
the rhino he has it, even if he’s guilty. But you’ll swing. Charlie,
who brought you back just now, had a chat with the ’Torney-Gen-
eral’s devil’s clerk’s clerk, while old Nog 0’ Bow Street was trying
to read their Spanish. He says it’s a Gov’nment matter. They
wants to hang you bad, they do, so’s to go the Jacky Spaniards
and say, ‘He were a nob, a nobby nob.’ (So you are, aren’t
you? One uncle an earl and t’other a dean, if so be what
they say’s true.) ‘ He were a nobby nob and we swung ’im. Go
you’n do likewise.’ ‘They want a striking example t’ keep the
West India trade quiet . . .” He wiped his forehead and moved
my water jug of red earth on the dirty deal table under the
window, for all the world like a host in front of a guest. «“‘ They
means you to swing,” he said. “They’ve silenced the Thames
Court reporters. Not a noospaper will publish a correct report

PART FIFTH 397

t’morrer. And you haven’t see nobody, nor you won’t, not if I
can help it.” |

He broke off and looked at me with an expression of candor.

“Mind you,” he said, “I’m not uffish. To ’n ornery gentle-
man—of the road or what you will—I’m not, if so be he’s the
necessary. Id take a letter like another. But for you, no—fear.
Not that I’ve my knife into you. What I can do to make you
comfor’ble I will do, both now an’ hereafter. But when I gets
the wink, I looks after my skin. So’d any man. You don’t see
nobody, nor you won’t; nor your nobby relations won’t have the
word. ‘Till the Hadmir’lty trile. Charlie says it’s unconstitu-
tional, you ought to see your ’torney, if you’ve one, or your father’s
got one. But Lor’, I says, ‘ Charlie, if they wants it they gets it.
This aint no habeas carpis, give the man a chance case. It’s the
Hadmir’lty. And not a man tried for piracy this thirty year. See
what a show it gives them, what bloody Radicle knows or keeres
what the perceedin’s should be? Whao’s a-goin’ t’? make a ques-
_ tion out of it? Go away,’ says I to Charlie. And that’s it
straight.” ;

He went towards the door, then turned.

“You should be in the Marshalsea common yard; even I knows
that. But they’ve the wink there. ‘Too full,’ says they. Too
full be d d. I’ve know’d the time—after the Vansdell smash
it were—when they found room for three hundred more im-
provident debtors over and above what they’re charted for. Too
full! Their common yard! They don’t want you to speak to a
soul, an’ you won’t till this day week, when the Hadmir’lty Ses-
sion is in full swing.” He went out and locked the door, snorting,
“Too full at the Marshalsea! . . . Go away!”

“Find out about the Lion,’ I called, as the door closed.

It cleared the air for me, that speech. I understood that they
wanted to hang me, and I wanted not to be hung, desperately,
from that moment. I had not much cared before; I had—call it,
moped. I had not teally believed, really sensed it out. It isn’t
easy to conceive that one is going to be hanged, I doubt if one does
even with the rope round one’s neck. I hadn’t much wanted to
live, but now I wanted to fight—one good fight before I went
under for good and all, condemned or acquitted. ‘There wasn’t

398 ROMANCE

anything left for me to live for, Seraphina could not be alive. The
Lion must have been lost.

But I was going to make a fight for it; curse it, I was going
to give them trouble. My “ them” was not so much the Govern-
ment that meant to hang me as the unseen powers that suffered
such a state of things, that allowed a number of little meannesses,
accidents, fatalities, to hang me. I began to worry the turnkey.
He gave me no help, only shreds of information that let me see
more plainly than ever how set “ they ” were on sacrificing me to
their exigencies.

The whole West Indian trade in London was in an uproar over
the Pirate Question and over the Slave Question. Jamaica was
still squealing for Separation before the premonitory grumbles of
Abolition. Horton Pen, over there, came back with astonishing
clearness before me. I seemed to hear old, wall-eyed, sandy-headed
Macdonald, agitating his immense bulk of ill-fitting white clothes
in front of his newspaper, and bellowing in his ox-voice:

“ Abolition, they give us Abolition . . . or ram it down our
throats. They who haven’t even the spunk to rid us o’ the d d
pirates, not the spunk to catch and hang one. . . . Jock, me
lahd, we’s abolush them before they sall touch our neegurs. . . .
Let them clear oor seas, let them hang one pirate, and then talk.”

I was the one they were going to hang, to consolidate the bond
with the old island. The cement wanted a little blood in the
mixing. Damn them! I was going to make a fight; they had torn
me from Seraphina, to fulfill their own accursed ends. I felt
myself grow harsh and strong, as a tree feels itself grow gnarled
by winter storms. I said to the turnkey again and again:

“Man, I will promise you a thousand pounds or a pension for
life, if you will get a letter through to my mother or Squire
Rooksby of Horton.”

He said he daren’t do it; enough was known of him to hang him
if he gave offense. His flabby fingers trembled, and his eyes grew
large with successive shocks of cupidity. He became afraid of
coming near me; of the strain of the temptation. On the next
day he did not speak a word, nor the next, nor the next. I began
to grow horribly afraid of being hung. The day before the trial
arrived. ‘Towards noon he flung the door open.

PART FIFTH 399.

“ Here’s paper, here’s pens,” he said. ‘“‘ You can prepare your
defense. You may write letters. Oh, hell! why didn’t they let
it come sooner, I’d have had your thousand pounds. I’ll run a
letter down to your people fast as the devil could take it. I know
a man, a gentleman of the road. For twenty pun promised, split
between us, he’ll travel faster’n Turpin did to York.” He was
waving a large sheet of newspaper agitatedly.

“What does it mean?” I asked. My head was whirling.

“Radicle papers got a-holt of it,” he said. ‘Trust them for
nosing out. And the Government’s answering them. ‘They say
you're going to suffer for your crimes. Hark to this . . . um,
um... ‘The wretched felon now in Newgate will incur the
just penalty . . .’ Then they slaps the West Indies in the face.
“When the planters threaten to recur to some other power for
protection, they, of course, believe that the loss of the colonies
would be severely felt. But...”

“The Lion’s home,” I said.

It burst upon me that she was—that she must be. Williams—
or Sebright—he was the man, had been speaking up for me. Or
Seraphina had been to the Spanish ambassador.

She was back; I should see her. I started up.

“The Lion’s home,” I repeated.

The turnkey snarled, “She was posted as overdue three days
ago.”

I couldn’t believe it was true.

“T saw it in the papers,” he grumbled on. ‘I dursn’t tell you.”
He continued violently, “ Blow my dickey. It would make a cat
sick.”

My sudden exaltation, my sudden despair, gave way to indiffer-
ence.

“Oh, coming, coming!” he shouted, in answer to an immense
bellowing cry that loomed down the passage without.

I heard him grumble, ‘‘ Of course, of course. I shan’t make a
penny.” Then he caught hold of my arm. “ Here, come along,
someone to see you in the press-yard.”

He pulled me along the noisome, black warren of passages,
slamming the inner door viciously behind him.

The press-yard—the exercising ground for the condemned—

400 ROMANCE

was empty; the last batch had gone out; my batch would be the
next to come in, the turnkey said suddenly. It was a well of a
place, high black walls going up into the desolate, weeping sky,
and quite tiny. At one end was a sort of slit in the wall,
closed with tall, immense windows. From there a faint sort of
rabbit’s squeak was going up through the immense roll and rumble
of traffic on the other side of the wall. The turnkey pushed me
towards it.

“Go on,” he said. “I'll not listen; I ought to. But, curse
me, I’m not a bad sort,”’ he added gloomily; “I dare say you'll
make it worth my while.”

I went and peered through the bars at a faint object pressed
against other bars in just such another slit across a black passage.

“What, Jackie, boy; what, Jackie? ”

Blinking his eyes, as if the dim light were too strong for them,
a thin, bent man stood there in a brilliant new court coat. His
face was meager in the extreme, the nose and cheekbones polished
and transparent like a bigaroon cherry. A thin tuft of reddish
hair was brushed back from his high, shining forehead. It was
my father. He exclaimed: ;

“What, Jackie, boy! How old you look!” then waved his
arm towards me. “In trouble?” he said. ‘‘ You in trouble?”

He rubbed his thin hands together, and looked round the place
with a cultured man’s air of disgust. I said, ‘“ Father!” and he
suddenly began to talk very fast and agitatedly of what he had
been doing for me. My mother, he said, was crippled with
rheumatism, and Rooksby and Veronica on the preceding Thurs-
day had set sail for Jamaica. He had read to my mother, beside
her bed, the newspaper containing an account of my case; and she
had given him money, and he had started with violent haste for
London. ‘The haste and the rush were still dazing him. He had
lived down there in the farmhouse beneath the downs, with the
stackyards under his eyes, with his books of verse and his few —
prints on the wall My God, how it all came back to me.

In his disjointed speeches, I could see how exactly the same it
all remained. ‘The same old surly man with a squint had driven
him along the muddy roads in the same ancient gig, past the bare
elms, to meet the coach. And my father had never been ia

PART FIFTH ~ : 401

London since he had walked the streets with the Prince Regent’s
friends. —

Whilst he talked to me there, lines of verse kept coming to his
lips; and, after the habitual pleasure of the apt quotation, he felt
acutely shocked at the inappropriateness of the place, the press-
yard, with the dim light weeping downwards between immensely
high walls, and the desultory snowflakes that dropped between us.
And he had tried so hard, in his emergency, to be practical. When
he had reached London, before even attempting to see me, he had
run from minister to minister trying to influence them in my
favor—and he reached me in Newgate with nothing at all effected.

I seemed to know him then, so intimately, so much better than
anything else in the world.

He began, “I had my idea in the up-coach last night. I
thought, ‘A very great personage was indebted to me in the old
days (more indebted than you are aware of, Johnnie). I will
intercede with him.’ That. was why my first step was to my old
tailor’s in Conduit Street. Because . . . what is fit for a farm
for a palace were low.”’ He stopped, reflected, then said, ‘‘ What
is fit for the farm for the palace were low.”

He felt across his coat for his breast pocket. It was what he
had done years and years ago, and all these years between, inscribe
ideas for lines of verse in his pocket-book. I said:

“You have seen the king?”

His face lengthened a little. ‘“‘ Not seen him. But I found
one of the duke’s secretaries, a pleasant young fellow . . . not
such as we used to be. But the duke was kind enough to interest
himself. Perhaps my name has lived in the land. I was called
Curricle Kemp, as I may have told you, because I drove a ver-
milion one with green and gilt wheels. . . .”

His face, peering at me through the bars, had, for a moment, a
flush of pride. Then he suddenly remembered, and, as if to pro-
pitiate his own reproof, he went on:

““T saw the Secretary of State, and he assured me, very civilly,
that not even the highest personage in the land. . . .” He dropped
his voice, “ Jackie, boy,” he said, his narrow-lidded eyes peering
miserably across at me, “ there’s not even hope of a reprieve after-
wards.”

402 ROMANCE

I leaned my face wearily against the iron bars. What, after
all, was the use of fighting if the Lion were not back?

Then, suddenly, as the sound of his words echoed down the
bare, black corridors, he seemed to realize the horror of it. His
face grew absolutely white, he held his head erect, as if listening to
a distant sound. And then he began to cry—horribly, and for a
long time.

It was I that had to comfort him. His head had bowed at the
conviction of his hopeless uselessness; all through his. own life he
had been made ineffectual by his indulgence in perfectly inno-
cent, perfectly trivial enjoyments, and now, in this extremity
of his only son, he was rendered almost fantastically of no
avail.

“No, no, sir! You have done all that anyone could; you
couldn’t break these walls down. Nothing else would help.”

Small, hopeless sobs shook him continually. His thin, delicate
white fingers gripped the black grille, with the convulsive grasp
of a very weak mn. It was more distressing to me than anything
I had ever seen or felt. ‘The mere desire, the intense desire to
comfort him, made me get a grip upon myself again. And I re-
membered that, now that I could communicate with the outer air,
it was absolutely easy; he would save my life. I said:

“You have only to go to Clapham, sir.”

And the moment I was in a state to command him, to direct
him, to give him something to do, he became a changed man. He
looked up and listened. I told him to go to Major Cowper’s.
It would be easy enough to find him at Clapham. Cowper, I
remembered, could testify to my having been seized by Tomas
Castro. He had seen me fight on the decks. And what was
more, he would certainly know the addresses of Kingston planters,
if any were in London. They could testify that I had been in
Jamaica all the while Nikola el Escoces was in Rio Medio. I
knew there were some. My father was fidgeting to be gone. He
had his line marked for him, and a will directing his own. He was
not the same man. But I particularly told him to send me a
lawyer first of all.

“Yes, yes!” he said fidgeting to go, “to Major Cowper’s.
Let me write his address.”

PART FIFTH 403

“And a solicitor,” I said. “Send him to me on your way
there.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, “I shall be able to be of use to the solicitor,
As a rule, they are men of no great perspicacity.”

And he went hurriedly away.

The real torture, the agony of suspense began then. I steadied
my nerves by trying to draw up notes for my speech to the jury
on the morrow. ‘That was the turnkey’s idea.

He said, “ Slap your chest, ’peal to the honor of a British gent,
and pitch it in strong.”

It was not much good; I could not keep to any logical sequence
of thought, my mind was forever wandering to what my father
was doing. I pictured him in his new blue coat, running agi-
tatedly through crowded streets, his coat-tails flying behind his
thin legs. The hours dragged on, and it was a matter of minutes.
-I had to hold upon the table edge to keep myself from raging
about the cell. I tried to bury myself again in the scheme for my
defense. I wondered whom my father would have found. There
was a man called Cary who had gone home from Kingston. He
had a bald head and blue eyes; he must remember me. If he
would corroborate! And the lawyer, when he came, might take
another line of defense. It began to fall dusk slowly, through the
small barred windows.

The entire night passed without a word from my father. I
paced up and down the whole time, composing speeches to the
jury. And then the day broke. I calmed myself with a sort of
frantic energy.

Early the jailer came in, and began fussing about my cell.

“Case comes on about one,” he said. “Grand jury at half
after twelve. No fear they won’t return a true bill. Grand jury,
‘five West India merchants. "They means to have you. ”Torney-
General, S’lic’tor-General, S’r Robert Mead, and five juniors agin
you. . . . You take my tip. Throw yourself on the mercy of
the court, and make a rousing speech with a young ’ooman in it.
Not that you'll get much mercy from them. They Admir’Ity
jedges is all hangers. ’S we say, ‘Oncet the anchor goes up in
the Old Bailey, there aint no hope. We begins to clean out the

404 ROMANCE

c’ndemned cell, here. Sticks the anchor up over their heads, when
it is Hadmir’lty case,’ ”” he commented.

I listened to him with strained attention. I made up my mind
to miss not a word uttered that day. It was my only chance.

“You don’t know anyone from Jamaica?” I asked.

He shook his bullet head, and tapped his purple nose. ‘‘ Can’t
be done,” he said. ‘‘ You’d get a ornery hallybi fer a guinea a
head, but they’d keep out of this case. They’ve necks like you
and me.”

Whilst he was speaking, the whole of the outer world, as far
as it affected me, came suddenly in upon me—that was what I
meant to the great city that lay all round, the world, in the center
of which was my cell. To the great mass, I was matter for a sensa-
tion; to them I might prove myself beneficial in this business.
Perhaps there were others who were thinking I might be useful
in one way or another. ‘There were the ministers of the Crown,
who did not care much whether Jamaica separated or not. But
they wanted to hang me because they would be able to say dis-
dainfully to the planters, ‘‘ Separate if you like; we’ve done our
duty, we’ve hanged a man.”

All those people had their eyes on me, and they were about the
only ones who knew of my existence. ‘That was the end of my
Romance! Romance! ‘The broad-sheet sellers would see to it
afterwards with a “ Dying confession.”

CHAPTER IV

NEVER saw my father again until I was in the prisoner’s

anteroom at the Old Bailey. It was full of lounging

men, whose fleshy limbs bulged out against the tight, loud
checks of their coats and trousers. ‘These were jailers waiting to
bring in their prisoners. On the other side of the black door the
Grand Jury was deliberating on my case, behind another, the court
was in waiting to try me. I was in a sort of tired lull. All night
I had been pacing up and down, trying to bring my brain to think
of points—points in my defense. It was very difficult. I knew
that I must keep cool, be calm, be lucid, be convincing; and my
brain had reeled at times, even in the darkness of the cell. I knew
it had reeled, because I remembered that once I had fallen against
the stone of one of the walls, and once against the door. Here, in
the light, with only a door between myself and the last scene, I
regained my hold. I was going to fight every inch from start to
finish. I was going to let no chink of their armor go untried.
I was going to make a good fight. My teeth chattered like cas-
tanets, jarring in my jaws until it was painful. But that was
only with the cold.

A hubbub of expostulation was going on at the third door. My
turnkey called suddenly:

“Let the genman in, Charlie. Pal o’ ourn,” and my father
ran huntedly into the room. He began an endless tale of a hack-
ney coachman who had stood in front of the door of his coach to
‘prevent his number being taken; of a crowd of caddee-smashers,
who had hustled him and filched his purse. ‘‘ Of course, I made
a fight for it,” he said, ‘‘a damn good fight, considering. It’s in
the blood. But the watch came, and, in short—on such an oc-
casion as this there is no time for words—I passed the night in
the watch-house. Many and many a night I passed there when I
and Lord But I am losing time.”

405

406 ROMANCE

“You aint fit to walk the streets of London alone, sir,” the
turnkey said. ¥
My father gave him a corner of his narrow-lidded eyes. My

man,” he said, “I walked the streets with the highest in the land be-

fore your mother bore you in Bridewell, or whatever jail it was.”

“Oh, no offense,” the turnkey muttered.

I said, “ Did you find Cowper, sir? Will he give evidence?”

“ Jackie,” he said agitatedly, as if he were afraid of offending
me, “he said you had filched his wife’s rings.”

That, in fact, was what Major Cowper had said—that I had
dropped into their ship near Port Royal Heads, and had after-
wards gone away with the pirates who had filched his wife’s rings.
My father, in his indignation, had not even deigned to ask him
for the address of Jamaica planters in London; and on his way
back to find a solicitor he had come into contact with those street
rowdies and the watch. He had only just come from before the
magistrates.

A man with one eye poked his head suddenly from behind the
Grand Jury door. He jerked his head in my direction.

“True bill against that ’ere,”’ he said, then drew his head in
again.

“ Jackie, boy,” my father said, putting a thin hand on my wrist,
and gazing imploringly into my eyes, “I’m ...Im...I
can’t tell you how. . . .”

I said, “It doesn’t matter, father.” I felt a foretaste of how
my past would rise up to crush me. Cowper had let that wife of
his coerce him into swearing my life away. I remembered vividly
his blubbering protestations of friendship when I persuaded Tomas
Castro to return him his black deed-box with the brass handle, on
that deck littered with rubbish. . . . “Oh, God bless you, God
bless you. You have saved me from starvation. . . .” ‘There
had been tears in his old blue eyes. “ If you need it I will go any-
where . . . do anything to help you. On the honor of a gentle-
man and a soldier.” I had, of course, recommended his wife to
give up her rings when the pirates were threatening her in the
cabin. The other door opened, another man said:

“ Now, then, in with that carrion, D’you want to keep the
judges waiting?”

ed

PART FIFTH 407
I stepped through the door straight down into the dock; there

_ was a row of spikes in the front of it. I wasn’t afraid; three men

in enormous wigs and ermine robes faced me; four in short wigs

_had their heads together like parrots on a branch. A fat man,
_ bareheaded, with a gilt chain round his neck, slipped from behind
into a seat beside the highest placed judge. He was wiping his

mouth and munching with his jaws. On each side of the judges,
beyond the short-wigged assessors, were chairs full of ladies and :
gentlemen. ‘They all had their eyes upon me. I saw it all very
plainly. I was going to see everything, to keep my eyes open,

not to let any chance escape. I wondered why a young girl with

blue eyes and pink cheeks tittered and shrugged her shoulders.
I did not know what was amusing. What astonished me was the

smallness, the dirt, the want of dignity of the room itself. I

thought they must be trying a case of my importance there by mis-

take. Presently I noticed a great gilt anchor above the judges’

—_—**s

head. I wondered why it was there, until I remembered it was

_an Admiralty Court. I thought, suddenly, ‘‘ Ah! if I had thought

to tell my father to go and see if the Lion had come in in the
night!”

A man was bawling out a number of names. . . . “ Peter
Plimley, gent., any challenge. . . . Lazarus Cohen, merchant,
any challenge. . . .”

The turnkey beside me leant with his back against the spikes,
He was talking to the man who had called us in.

“‘ Lazarus Cohen, West Indian merchant. . . . Lord, well,
I'd challenge... .”

The other man said, “‘ S—sh.”

“‘ His old dad give me five shiners to put him up to a thing if
I could,” the turnkey said again.

I didn’t catch his meaning until an old man with a very ragged
gown was handing up a book to a row of others in a box so near
that I could almost have touched them. Then I realized that the
turnkey had been winking to me to challenge the jury. I called
out at the highest of the judges:

“T protest against that jury. It is packed. Half of them, at
least, are West Indian merchants.”

There was a stir all over the court. I realized then that what

408 ROMANCE

had seemed only a mass of stuffs of some sort were human beings
all looking at me. The judge I had called to opened a pair of
dim eyes upon me, clasped and unclasped his hands, very dry,
ancient, wrinkled. The judge on his right called angrily:

“Nonsense, it is too late. . . . They are being sworn. You
should have spoken when the names were read.” Underneath
his wig was an immensely broad face with glaring yellow
eyes.

I said, “It is scandalous. You want to murder me. How
should I know what you do in your courts? I say the jury is
packed.”

The very old judge closed his eyes, opened them again, then
gasped out:
~ “Silence. We are here to try you. This is a court of
law.”

The turnkey pulled my sleeve under cover of the planking.
“Treat him civil,” he whispered, “ Lord Justice Stowell of the
Hadmir’lty. ”Tother’s Baron Garrow of the Common Law; a
beast; him as hanged that kid. You can sass him; it doesn’t
matter.”

Lord Stowell waved his hand to the clerk with the ragged
gown; the book passed from hand to hand along the faces of the
jury, the clerk gabbling all the while. The old judge said sud-
denly, in an astonishingly deep, majestic voice:

“Prisoner at the bar, you must understand that we are here
to give you an impartial trial according to the laws of this land.
If you desire advice as to the procedure of this court you can
have it.”

I said, “I still protest against that jury. I am an innocent
man, and us

He answered querulously, ‘“‘ Yes, yes, afterwards.” And then
creaked, ‘‘ Now the indictment. . . .”

Someone hidden from me by three barristers began to read in
a loud voice not very easy to follow. I caught:

“For that the said John Kemp, alias Nichols, alias Nikola
el Escoces, alias el Demonio, alias ¢1 Diabletto, on the twelfth of
May last, did feloniously and upon the high seas piratically seize
a certain ship called the Victoria . . . um .. . um, the proper-

PART FIFTH 409

ties of Hyman Cohen and others . . . and did steal and take
therefrom six hundred and thirty barrels of coffee of the value of
See UMN is UI. um .. . one hundred and one barrels
of coffee of the value a . ninety-four half kegs . . . and
divers others . . .”

I gave an immense sigh. . . . That was it, then. I had heard
of the Victoria; it was when I was at Horton that the news of her
loss reached us. Old Macdonald had sworn; it was the day a
negro called Apollo had taken to the bush. I ought to be able to
prove that. Afterwards, ot one of the judges asked me if I pleaded
guilty or not guilty. I began a long wrangle about being John
Kemp but not Nikola el Escoces. I was going to fight every inch
of the way. ‘They said:

“You will have your say afterwards. At present, guilty or not
guilty?”

I refused to plead at all; I was not the man. The third judge
- woke up, and said hurriedly:

“That is a plea of not guilty, enter it as such.” ‘Then he went

- to sleep again. The young girl on the bench beside him laughed
joyously, and Mr. Baron Garrow nodded round at her, then
snapped viciously at me:

“You don’t make your case any better by this sort of foolery.”
His eyes glared at me like an awakened owl’s.

I said, “I’m fighting for my neck . . . and you'll have to
fight, too, to get it.”

The old judge said angrily, ‘‘ Silence, or you will have to be
removed.”

I said, “ I am fighting for my life.”

There was a sort of buzz all round the court.

Lord Stowell said, “‘ Yes, yes;”’ and then, ““ Now, Mr. King’s
Advocate, I suppose Mr. Alfonso Jervis opens for you.”

A dusty wig swam up from just below my left hand, almost to
a level with the dock.

The old judge shut his eyes, with an air of a man who is going
a long journey in a post-chaise. Mr. Baron Garrow dipped his
pen into an invisible ink-pot, and scratched it on his desk. A long
story began to drone from under the wig, an interminable farrago
of dull nonsense, in a hypocuondriacal voice; a long tale about

410 ROMANCE

piracy in general; piracy in the times of the Greeks, piracy in the
times of William the Conqueror . . . pirata nequissima
Eustachio, and thanking God that a case of the sort had not been
heard. in that court for an immense lapse of years. Below me was
an array of wigs, on each side a compressed mass of humanity,
squeezed so tight that all the eyeballs seemed to be starting out of
the heads towards me. From the wig below, a translation of the
florid phrases of the Spanish papers was coming:

“ His very Catholic Majesty, out of his great love for his
ancient friend and ally, his Britannic Majesty, did surrender the
body of the notorious El Demonio, called also . . .”

I began to wonder who had composed that precious document,
whether it was the Juez de la Primeria Instancia, bending his
yellow face and sloe-black eyes above the paper, over there in
Havana—or whether it was O’Brien, who was dead since the
writing.

All the while the barrister was droning on. I did not listen
because I had heard all that before—in the room of the Judge of
the First Instance at Havana. Suddenly appearing behind the
backs of the row of gentlefolk on the bench was the pale, thin
face of my father. I wondered which of his great friends had
got him his seat. He was nodding to me and smiling faintly. I
nodded, too, and smiled back. I was going to show them that I
was not cowed. ‘The voice of the barrister said:

“M’luds and gentlemen of the jury, that finishes the Spanish
evidence, which was taken on commission on the island of Cuba.
We shall produce the officer of H. M.S. Elephant, to whom he
was surrendered by the Spanish authorities at Havana, thus
proving the prisoner to be the pirate Nikola, and no other. We
come, now, to the specific instance, m’luds and gentlemen, an
instance as vile . . .” }

It was some little time before I had grasped how absolutely the
Spanish evidence damned me. It was as if, once I fell into the
hands of the English officer on Havana quays, the identity of
Nikola could by no manner of means be shaken from round my
neck. ‘The barrister came to the facts.

A Kingston ship had been boarded . . . and there was the old
story over again. I seemed to see the Rio Medio schooner rushing

PART FIFTH 411

towards where I and old Cowper and old Lumsden looked back
from the poop to see her come alongside; the strings of brown
pirates pour in empty-handed, and out laden. Only in the case
of the Victoria there were added the ferocities of “the prisoner
at the bar, m’luds and gentlemen of the jury, a fiend in human
shape, as we shall prove with the aid of the most respectable wit-
messes: 5.

The man in the wig sat down, and, before I understood what
was happening, a fat, rosy man—the Attorney-General—whose
cheerful gills gave him a grotesque resemblance to a sucking pig,
was calling “ Edward Sadler,” and the name blared like sudden
fire leaping up all over the court. The Attorney-General wagged
his gown into a kind of bunch behind his hips, and a man, young,
fair, with a reddish beard and a shiny suit of clothes, sprang into
a little box facing the jury. He bowed nervously in several direc-
tions, and laughed gently; then he looked at me and scowled. The
Attorney-General cleared his throat pleasantly . .

“Mr. Edward Sadler, you were, on May 25th, chiet mate of
the good ship Victoria. . . .”

The fair man with the pear told his story, the old story of the
ship with its cargo of coffee and dye-wood; its good passage past
the Gran Caymanos; the becalming off the Cuban shore in lati-
tude so and so, and the boarding of a black schooner, calling itself
a Mexican privateer. I could see all that.

“The prisoner at the bar came alongside in a boat, with seven-
teen Spaniards,” he said, in a clear, expressionless voice, looking
me full in the face.

I called out to the old judge, “My Lord . . . I protest. This
is perjury. I was not the man. It was Nichols, a Nova Sco-
tian.”

Mr. Baron Garrow roared, “ Silence,” his face suffused with
blood.

Old Lord Stowell quavered, ‘“‘ You must respect the proced-
ure, . . 2”

“ Am I to hear my life sworn away without a word?” I asked.

He drew himself frostily into his robes. “God forbid,” he
said; “but at the proper time you can cross-examine, if you think

fit ”

412 ROMANCE

The Attorney-General smiled at the jury-box and addressed
himself to Sadler, with an air of patience very much tried:

“You swear the prisoner is the man?”

The fair man turned his sharp blue eyes upon me. I called,
“For God’s sake, don’t perjure yourself. You are a decent
man.”

“ No, I won’t swear,” he said slowly. “I think he was. He
had his face blacked then, of course. When I had sight of him
at the Thames Court I thought he was; and seeing the Spanish
evidence, I don’t see where’s the room. . . .”

“The Spanish evidence is part of the plot,” I said.

The Attorney-General snickered. “Go on, Mr. Sadler,” he
said. “‘ Let’s have the rest of the plot unfolded.”

A juryman laughed suddenly, and resumed an abashed sudden
silence. Sadler went on to tell the old story. . . . I saw it all
as he spoke; only gaunt, shiny-faced, yellow Nichols was chew-
ing and hitching his trousers in place of my Tomas, with his san-
guine oaths and jerked gestures. And there was Nichols’ wanton,
aimless ferocity.

“ He had two pistols, which he fired twice each, while we were
hoisting the studding-sails by his order, to keep up with the
schooner. He fired twice into the crew. One of the men hit
died afterwards. . . .”

Later, another vessel, an American, had appeared in the offing,
and the pirates had gone in chase of her. He finished, and Lord
Stowell moved one of his ancient hands. It was as if a gray lizard
had moved on his desk, a little toward me.

““ Now, prisoner,” he said.

I drew a deep breath. I thought for a minute that, after all,
there was a little of fair play in the game—that I had a decent,
fair, blue-eyed man in front of me. He looked hard at me; I
hard at him; it was as if he were going to wrestle for a belt. The
young girl on the bench had her lips parted and leant forward,
her head a little on one side.

I said, “ You won’t swear I was the man . .. Nikola el
Escoces? ”

He looked meditatively into my eyes; it was a duel between
us.

PART FIFTH 413

““T won’t swear,” he said. “ You had your face blacked, and
didn’t wear a beard.”

A soft growth of hair had come out over my cheeks whilst I
lay in prison. I rubbed my hand against it, and thought that he
had drawn first blood.

— “You must not say ‘you,’” I said. “I swear I was not the
man. Did he talk like me?”

“Can’t say that he did,” Sadler answered, moving from one
foot to the other.

“ Had he got eyes like me, or a nose, or a mouth?”

“ Can’t say,” he answered again. ‘‘ His face was blacked.”

“ Didn’t he talk Blue Nose—in the Nova Scotian way?”

“Well, he did,” Sadler assented slowly.. “ But anyone could
for a disguise. It’s as easy as . . .”

Beside me, the turnkey whispered suddenly, “ Pull him up; stop.
his mouth.”

I said, ‘“‘ Wasn’t he an older man? Didn’t he look between
forty and fifty?”

“ What do you look like?” the chief mate asked.

“I’m twenty-four,” I answered; “I can prove it.”

“Well, you look forty and older,” he answered negligently.
“So did he.”

His cool, disinterested manner overwhelmed me like the blow
of an immense wave; it proved so absolutely that I had parted with
all semblance of youth. It was something added to the immense
waste of waters between myself and Seraphina; an immense waste
of years. I did not ask much of the next witness; Sadler had
made me afraid. Septimus Hearn, the master of the Victoria,
was a man with eyes as blue and as cold as bits of round blue
pebble; a little goat’s beard, iron-gray; apple-colored cheeks, and
small gold earrings in his ears. He had an extraordinarily mourn-
ful voice, and a retrospective melancholy of manner. He was
just such another master of a trader as Captain Lumsden had
been; and it was the same story over again, with little different
touches, the hard blue eyes gazing far over the top of my head; the
gnarled hands moving restlessly on the rim of his hat.

“‘ Afterwards the prisoner ordered the steward to give us a drink
of brandy. A glass was offered me, but I refused to drink it, and

414 ROMANCE

he said, ‘ Who is it that refuses to drink a glass of brandy?’ He
asked me what countryman I was, and if I was an American.”

There were two others from the unfortunate Victoria—a
Thomas Davis, boatswain, who had had one of Nikola’s pistol-
balls in his hip; and a sort of steward—lI have forgotten his name
—who had a scar of a cutlass wound on his forehead.

It was horrible enough; but what distressed me more was that
I could not see what sort of impression I was making. Once the
judge who was generally asleep woke up and began to scratch
furiously with his quill; once three of the assessors—the men in
short wigs—began an animated conversation; one man with a
thin, dark face laughed noiselessly, showing teeth like a white
waterfall. A man in the body of the court on my left had an
enormous swelling, blood-red, and looking as if a touch must
burst it, under. his chin; at one time he winked his eyes furiously
for a long time on end. It seemed to me that something in the
evidence must be affecting all these people. The turnkey beside
me said to his mate, “ Twig old Justice Best making notes in his
stud-calendar,’ and suddenly the conviction forced itself upon
me that the whole thing, the long weary trial, the evidence, the
parade of fairness, was being gone through in a spirit of mockery,
as a mere formality; that the judges and the assessors, and the man
with the goiter took no interest whatever in my case. It was a
foregone conclusion.

A tiny, fair man, with pale hair oiled and rather long for those
days, and with green and red signet rings on fingers that he was
forever running through that hair, came mincingly into the wit-
ness-box. He held for a long time what seemed to be an amiable
conversation with Sir Robert Gifford, a tall, portentous-looking
man, who had black beetling brows, like tufts of black horsehair
sticking in the crannies of a cliff. The conversation went like -
this:

“You are the Hon. Thomas Oldham?”

Ses, yese’

“You know Kingston, Jamaica, very well?”

“T was there four years—two as the secretary to the cabinet of

his Grace the Duke of Manchester, two as civil secretary to the
admiral on the station.”

PART FIFTH 415

“You saw the prisoner?”

“Yes, three times.”

I drew an immense breath; I thought for a moment that they
had delivered themselves into my hands. The thing must prove
of itself that I had been in Jamaica, not in Rio Medio, through
those two years. My heart began to thump like a great solemn
drum, like Paul’s bell when the king died—solemn, insistent,
dominating everything. The little man was giving an account of
the “’bawminable” state of confusion into which the island’s
trade was thrown by the misdeeds of a pirate called Nikola el
Demonio.

“T assure you, my luds,” he squeaked, turning suddenly to the
judges, “the island was wrought up into a pitch of . . . ah
. . - almost disloyalty. The ... ah. . . planters were clamor-
ing for .. . ah . . . separation. And, to be sure, I trust you'll
hang the prisoner, for if you don’t . . .”

Lord Stowell shivered, and said suddenly with haste, “ Mr.
_ Oldham, address yourself to Sir Robert.”

; I was almost happy; the cloven hoof had peeped so damningly
out. The little man bowed briskly to the old judge, asked for
a chair, sat himself down, and arranged his coat-tails.

“ As I was saying,” he prattled on, “ the trouble and the worry
that this man caused to His Grace, myself, and Admiral Rowley
were inconceivable. You have no idea, you... ah...can't
conceive. And no wonder, for, as it turned out, the island was
simply honeycombed by his spies‘and agents. You have no idea;
people who seemed most respectable, people we ourselves had
dealings with . . .”

He rattled on at immense length, the barrister taking huge
pinches of yellow snuff, and smiling genially with the air of a
horse-trainer watching a pony go faultlessy through difficult
tricks. Every now and then he flicked his whip.

“Mr. Oldham, you saw the prisoner three times. If it does
not overtax your memory pray tell us.” And the little creature
pranced off in a new direction.

“Tax my memory! Gad, I like that. You remember a man
who has had your blood as near as could be, don’t you?”

I had been looking at him eagerly, but my interest faded away

416 ROMANCE

now. It was going to be the old confusing of my identity with
Nikola’s. And yet I seemed to know the little beggar’s falsetto;
it was a voice one does not forget.

“Remember! ” he squeaked. “Gad, gentlemen of the jury, he
came as near as possible You have no idea what a ferocious —
devil it is.”

I was wondering why on earth Nichols should have wanted to
kill such a little thing. Because it was obvious that it must have
been Nichols.

“As near as possible murdered myself and Admiral Rowley
and a Mr. Topnambo, a most enlightened and loyal . . . ah

. inhabitant of the island, on the steps of a public inn.”

I had it then. It was the little man David Macdonald had
rolled down the steps with, that night at the Ferry Inn on the
Spanish Town road.

“He was lying in wait for us with a gang of assassins. I was
stabbed on the upper lip. I lost so much blood . . . had to be
invalided . . . cannot think of horrible episode without shud-
dering.”

He had seen me then, and when Ramon (“a Spaniard who was
afterwards proved to be a spy of El Demonio’s—of the prisoner’s.
He was hung since”’) had driven me from the place of execution
after the hanging of the seven pirates; and he had come into
Ramon’s store at the moment when Carlos (“a piratical devil if
ever there was one,” the little man protested) had drawn me into
the back room, where Don Balthasar and O’Brien and Seraphina
sat waiting. The men who were employed to watch Ramon’s had
never seen me leave again, and afterwards a secret tunnel was dis-
covered leading down to the quay.

“This, apparently, was the way by which the prisoner used to
arrive and quit the island secretly,” he finished his evidence in
chief, and the beetle-browed, portly barrister sat down. I was
not so stupid but what I could see a little, even then, how the most
innocent events of my past were going to rise up and crush me;
but I was certain I could twist him into admitting the goodness
of my tale which hadn’t yet been told. He knew I had been in
Jamaica, and, put what construction he liked on it, he would have
to admit it. I called out:

PART FIFTH 417

“Thank God, my turn’s come at last!”

The faces of the Attorney-General, the King’s Advocate, Sir
Robert Gifford, Mr. Lawes, Mr. Jervis, of all the seven counsel
‘that were arrayed to crush me, lengthened into simultaneous grins,
varying at the jury box. But I didn’t care; I grinned, too. I
was going to show them.

It was as if I flew at the throat of that little man. It seemed
to me that I must be able to crush a creature whose malice was as
obvious and as nugatory as the green and red rings that he ex-
hibited in his hair every few minutes. He wanted to show the
jury that he had rings; that he was a mincing swell; that I hadn’t
and that I was a bloody pirate. I said:

“You know that during the whole two years Nichols was at
Rio I was an improver at Horton Pen with the Macdonalds, the
agents of my brother-in-law, Sir Ralph Rooksby. You must
know these things. You were one of the Duke of Manchester’s
spies.”

We used to call the Duke’s privy council that.

“I certainly know nothing of the sort,” he said, folding his
hands along the edge of the witness-box, as if he had just thought
of exhibiting his rings in that manner. He was abominably cool.
I said:

“You must have heard of me. The Topnambos knew
me.”

“The Topnambos used to talk of a blackguard with a name
like Kemp who kept himself mighty. out of the way in the
Vale.”

“You knew I was on the island,” I pinned him down.

“You used to come to the island,” he corrected. “I’ve just
explained how. But you were not there much, or we should have
been able to lay hands on you. We wanted to. There was a
warrant out after you tried to murder us. But you had been
smuggled away by Ramon.”

I tried again:

“You have heard of my brother-in-law, Sir Ralph Rooksby? ”

I wanted to show that, if I hadn’t rings, I had relations.

“ Nevah heard of the man in my life,” he said.

“ He was the largest land proprietor on the island,” I said.

418 ROMANCE

“Dessay,” he said; “I knew forty of the largest. Mostly
sharpers in the boosing-kens.” He yawned.

I said viciously:

“Tt was your place to know the island. You knew Horton
Pen—the Macdonalds?”

The face of jolly old Mrs. Mac. came to my mind—the im-
peccable, Scotch, sober respectability.

“Oh, I knew the Macdonalds,” he said—“ of them. The uncle
was a damn rebellious, canting, planting Scotchman. Horton
Pen was the center of the Separation Movement. We could have
hung him if we’d wanted to. The nephew was the writer of an
odious blackmailing print. He calumniated all the decent, loyal
inhabitants. He was an agent of you pirates, too. We arrested
him—got his papers; know all about your relations with him.”

I said, “‘ That’s all nonsense. Let us hear’’—the Attorney-
General had always said that—‘‘ what you know of myself.”

“What I know of you,” he sniffed, “if it’s a pleasuah, was
something like this. You came to the island in a mysterious way,
gave out that you were an earl’s son, and tried to get into the very
excellent society of . . . ah . . . people like my friends, the Top-
nambos. But they would not have you, and after that you kept
yourself mighty close; no one ever saw you but once or twice, and
then it was riding about at night with that humpbacked scoundrel
of a blackmailer. You, in fact, weren’t on the island at all, except
when you came to spy for the pirates. You used to have long
confabulations with that scoundrel Ramon, who kept you posted
about the shipping. As for the blackmailer with the humpback,
David Macdonald, you kept him, you . . . ah . . . subsidized
his filthy print to foment mutiny and murder among the black
fellows, and preach separation. You wanted to tie our hands, and
prevent our . . . ah .. . prosecuting the preventive measures:
against you. When you found that it was no good you tried to
murder the admiral and myself, and that very excellent man
‘Topnambo, coming from a ball. After that you were seen en-
couraging seven of your... ah... pirate fellows whom we
were hanging, and you drove off in haste with your agent, Ramon,

before we could lay hands on you, and vanished from the
island.”

PART FIFTH 419

I didn’t lose my grip; I went at him again, blindly, as if I were
boxing with my eyes full of blood, but my teeth set tight. I
said:

“You used to buy things yourself of old Ramon; bought them
for the admiral to load his frigates with; things he sold at Key
West.”

“That was one of the lies your scoundrel David Macdonald
circulated against us.”

“You bought things . . . even whilst you were having his
store watched.”

“Upon my soul!” he said.

“You used to buy things. . . .” I pinned him. He looked
suddenly at the King’s Advocate, then dropped his eyes.

“ Nevah bought a thing in my life,” he said.

I knew the man had; Ramon had told me of his buying for the
admiral more than three hundred barrels of damaged coffee for
thirty pounds. I was in a mad temper. I smashed my hand upon
the spikes of the rail in front of me, and although I saw hands
move impulsively towards me all over the court, I did not know
that my arm was impaled and the blood running down.

“ Perjurer,” I shouted, “ Ramon himself told me.”

“ Ah, you were mighty thick with Ramon . . .” he said.

I let him stand down. I was done. Someone below said
harshly, ‘‘ That closes our case, m’luds,” and the court rustled all
over. Old Lord Stowell in front of me shivered a little, looked
at the window, and then said:

“Prisoner at the bar, our procedure has it that if you wish to
say anything, you may now address the jury. Afterwards, if you
had a counsel, he could call and examine your witnesses, if you
have any.”

It was growing very dark in the court. I began to tell my
story; it was so plain, so evident, it shimmered there before me

. . and yet I knew it was so useless.

I remembered that in my cell I had reasoned out that I must
be very constrained; very lucid about the opening. “On such
and such a day I landed at Kingston, to become an improver on
the estate of my brother-in-law. He is Sir Ralph Rooksby of
Horton Priory in Kent.” I did keep cool; I was lucid; I spoke

420 ROMANCE

like that. I had my eyes fixed on the face of the young girl upon
the bench. I remember it so well. Her eyes were fixed, fasci-
nated, upon my hand. I tried to move it, and found that it was
stuck upon the spike on which I had jammed it. I moved it
carelessly away, and only felt a little pain, as if from a pin-prick;
but the blood was dripping on to the floor, pat, pat. Later on,
a man lit the candles on the judge’s desk, and the court looked
different. There were deep shadows everywhere; and the illu-
minated face of Lord Stowell looked grimmer, less kind, more
ancient, more impossible to bring a ray of sympathy to. Down
below, the barristers of the prosecution leaned back with their —
arms all folded, and the air of men resting in an interval of
cutting down a large tree. The barristers who were merely lis-
teners looked at me from time to time. I heard one say, “‘ That
man ought to have his hand bound up.” I was telling the story of
my life, that was all I could do.

“ As for Ramon, how could I know he was in the pay of the
pirates, even if he were. I swear I did not know. Everyone on
the island had dealings with him, the admiral himself. That is not
calumny. On my honor, the admiral did have dealings. Some of
you have had dealings with forgers, but that does not make you
forgers.”

I warmed to it; I found words. I was telling the story for
that young girl. Suddenly I saw the white face of my father peep
at me between the head of an old man with an enormous nose,
and a stout lady in a brown cloak that had a number of little
watchmen’s capes. He smiled suddenly, and nodded again and
again, opened his eyes, shut them; furtively waved a hand. It
distracted me, threw me off my balance, my coolness was gone.
It was as if something had snapped. After that I remember very
little; I think I may have quoted the “ Prisoner of Chillon,” be-.
cause he put it into my head.

I seemed to be back again in Cuba. Down below me the bar-
risters were talking. ‘The King’s Advocate pulled out a puce-
colored bandanna, and waved it abroad preparatorily to blowing
his nose. A cloud of the perfume of a West Indian bean went up
from it, sweet and warm. I had smelt it last at Rio, the sensation
was so strong that I could not tell where I was. The candles

PART FIFTH 421

made a yellow glow on the judge’s desk; but it seemed to be the
blaze of light in the cell where Nichols and the Cuban had fenced.
I thought I was back in Cuba again. The people in the court
disappeared in the deepening shadows. At times I could not
speak. Then I would begin again.

If there were to be any possibility of saving my life, I had to
tell what I had been through—and to tell it vividly—I had to
narrate the story of my life; and my whole life came into my
mind. It was Seraphina who was the essence of my life; who
spoke with the voice of all Cuba, of all Spain, of all Romance.
I began to talk about old Don Balthasar Riego. I began to talk
about Manuel-del-Popolo, of his red shirt, his black eyes, his
mandolin; I saw again the light of his fires flicker on the other
side of the ravine in front of the cave.

And I rammed all that into my story, the story I was telling
to that young girl. I knew very well that I was carrying my
audience with me; I knew how to do it, I had it in the blood.
The old pale, faded, narrow-lidded father who was blinking and
* nodding at me, had been one of the best raconteurs that ever was.
I knew how. In the black shadows of the wall of the court I
could feel the eyes upon me; I could see the parted lips of the
young girl as she leaned further towards me. I knew it because,
when one of the barristers below raised his voice, someone hissed
“S—sh” from the shadows. And suddenly it came into my
head, that even if I did save my life by talking about these things,
it would be absolutely useless. I could never go back again; never
be the boy again; never hear the true voice of the Ever Faithful
Island. What did it matter even if I escaped; even if I could go
back? The sea would be there, the sky, the silent dim hills, the
listless surge; but J should never be there, I should be altered
for good and all. I should never see the breathless dawn in the
pondwater of Havana harbor, never be there with Seraphina close
beside me in the little drogher. All that remained was to see
this fight through, and then have done with fighting. I remember
the intense bitterness of that feeling and the oddity of it all; of
the one “I” that felt like that, of the other that was raving in
front of a lot of open-eyed idiots, three old judges, and a young
girl. And, in a queer way, the thoughts of the one “I” floated

°

422 ROMANCE

through into the words of the other, that seemed to be waving
its hands in its final struggle, a little way in front of me.

“Look at me... look at what they have made of me, one
and the other of them. I was an innocent boy. What am I now?
They have taken my life from me, let them finish it how they will,
what does it matter to me, what do I care?”

There was a rustle of motion all round the court. On board
Rowley’s flagship the heavy irons had sawed open my wrists. I
hadn’t been ironed in Newgate, but the things had healed up very
little. I happened to look down at my claws of hands with the
grime of blood that the dock spikes had caused.

“What sort of a premium is it that you set on sticking to the
right? Is this how you are going to encourage the others like
sme? What do I care about your death? What’s life to me?
Let them get their scaffold ready. I have suffered enough to be
put out of my misery. God, I have suffered enough with one and
another. Look at my hands, I say. Look at my wrists, and say
if I care any more.” I held my ghastly paws high, and: the candle
light shone upon them.

Out of the black shadows came shrieks of women and curses.
I saw my young girl put her hands over her face and slip slowly,
very slowly, from her chair, down out of sight. People were
staggering in different directions. I had had more to say, but
I forgot in my concern for the young girl. The turnkey pulled
my sleeve and said:

“T say, that aint ¢rwe, is it, it aint true?” Because he seemed
not to want it to have been true, I glowed for a moment with the
immense pride of my achievement. I had made them see things.

A minute after, I understood how futile it was. I was not a
fool even in my then half mad condition. The real feeling of the
place came back upon me, the “ Court of Law” of it. The
King’s Advocate was whispering to the Attorney-General, he
motioned with his hand, first in my direction, then towards the
jury; then they both laughed and nodded. They knew the ropes
too well for me, and there were seven West India merchants up
there who would remember their pockets in a minute. But I
didn’t care. I had made them see things.

CHAPTER V.

HAD shot my bolt and I was going to die; I could see it in
the way the King’s Advocate tossed his head back, fluttered
his bands, looked at the jury-box, and began to play with
the seals on his fob. “The court had resumed its stillness. A man
in some sort of livery passed a square paper to the Lord Mayor,
the Lord Mayor passed it to Lord Stowell, who opened it with a
jerking motion of an ancient fashion that impressed me immensely.
It was as if I, there at the end of my life, were looking at a man
opening a letter of the reign of Queen Anne. ‘The shadows of
his ancient, wrinkled face changed as he read, raising his eye-
_ brows and puckering his mouth. He handed the unfolded paper
_to Mr. Baron Garrow, then with one wrinkled finger beck-
oned the Attorney-General to him. The third judge was still
asleep.
“What the devil’s this?” the turnkey beside me said to his
companion.
I was in a good deal of pain, and felt sickly that every pulse of
_ my heart throbbed in my mangled hand. The other spat straight
in front of him.

“ Damme if I know,” he said. “ This cursed business ought to
have been over and done with an hour agone. I told Jinks to —
have my rarebit and noggin down by the gate-house fire at half-
past five, and it’s six now.”

They began an interminable argument under their breaths.

“Tt’s that wager of Lord March’s ... run a mile, walk a
mile, eat five pounds of mutton, drink five pints of claret. No,
it aint. . . . Medmenham coach aint in yet . . . roads too
heavy. ... It is. What else would stop the Court at this time
of night? It isn’t, or Justice Best ’d be awake and hedging his
bets.”

In a dizzy way I noted the Attorney-General making his way
carefully back between the benches to his knot of barristers, and

423

424 ROMANCE

their wigs went all together in a bunch like ears of corn drawn sud- |
denly into a sheaf. The heads of the other barristers were like un- _
reaped ears. A man with a face like a weasel’s called to a man with
a face like a devil’s—he was leaving the court—something about
an ambassador. ‘The other stopped, turned, and deposited his bag
again. I heard the deep voice of Sir Robert Gifford say: “ What!
; Never! ... too infamous, ...” and then the interest
and the light seemed to flicker out together. I could hardly see.
Voices called out to each other, harsh, dry, as if their owners had
breathed nothing but dust for years and years.

One loud one barked, ‘‘ You can’t hear him, m’luds; in Rex v.
Marsupenstein. .. .”

A lot began calling all together, “ Ah, but that was different,
Mr. Attorney. You couldn’t subpoena him, he being in the
position of extra lege commune. But if he offers a statement. . .”

The candles seemed to-be waving deliberately likeelm-tops in
a high wind.

Someone called, ‘“‘ Clerk, fetch me volume xiii. . . . I think we
shall find there. . . . You recollect the case of Hildeshein v.
Roe. . . . Wasn’t it Hildegaulen and another, mud?” .. .
“T tried the case myself. The Prussian Plenipotentiary. . . .”

I wanted to call out to them that it was not worth while to try
their dry throats any more; that having shot my bolt, I gave in.
But I could not think of any words, I was so tired. “I didn’t
sleep at all last night,” I found myself saying to myself.

The sleeping judge woke up suddenly and snarled, ‘“ Why in
Heaven’s name don’t we get on? We shall be all night. Let him
call the second name on the list. We can take the Spanish am-
bassador when you have settled. For my part I think we ought
to hear him. .. .”

Lord Stowell said suddenly, ‘‘ Prisoner at the bar, some gentle-
men have volunteered statements on your behalf. If you wish it,
they can be called?”

I didn’t answer; I did not understand; I wanted to tell him
I did not care, because the Lion was posted as overdue and Sera-
phina was drowned. The Court seemed to be moving slowly up
and down in front of me like the deck of a ship. I thought I was
bound again, and on the sofa in the gorgeous cabin of the Madre-

- | PART FIFTH 425

de-Dios. Someone seemed to be calling, “Prisoner at the bar

. Prisoner at the bar... .” It was as if the candles had
been hes in front of the Madonna with the pink child, only she
had a gilt anchor instead of the spiky gilt glory above her head.
Somebody was saying, “‘ Hello there. . . . Hold up! .. . Here,
bring a chair, . . .” and there were arms around me. Afterwards
Isat down. A very old judge’s voice said something rather kindly,
I thought. I knew it was the very old judge, because he was
called the star of Cuban law. Someone would be bending over
me soon, with’ a lanthorn, and I should be wiping the flour out
of my eyes and blinking at the red velvet and gilding of the cabin
ceiling. In a minute Carlos and Castro would come. .. or was
it O’Brien who would come? No, O’Brien was dead; stabbed,
with a knife in his neck; the blood was still sticky between my
first and second fingers. I could feel it. I ought to have been
allowed to wash my hands before I was tried; or was it before I
‘spoke to the admiral? One would not speak to a man with hands
like that.

A loud, high-pitched voice called from up in the air, “I will
give any of you gentlemen of the robe down there fifty pounds to
conduct the remainder of the case for him. I am the prisoner’s
father.”

My father’s voice broke the spell. ~I was in the court; the
candles were still burning; all the faces, lit up or in the shadow,
were bunched together in little groups; hands waved. ‘The bar-
rister whose face was like the devil’s under his wig held in his
hands the paper that had been handed to Lord Stowell; my father
was talking to him from the bench.. The barrister, tall, his robes
old and ragged, silhouetted against the light, glanced down the
paper, fluttered it in his hand, nodded to my father, and began a
grotesque, nasal drawl:

“M’luds, I will conduct the case for the prisoner, if your
lordships will bear with me a little. He obviously can’t call his
own witnesses. If he has been treated as he says, it has been one
of the most abominable . . .”

Old Lord Stowell said, “ Ch’t, ch’t, Mr. Walker; you know
you must not make a speech for the prisoner. Call your witness.
It is all that is needed.”

426 "ROMANCE

I wondered what he meant by that. The barrister was calling
a man of the name of Williams. I seemed to know the name. I
seemed to know the man, too.

“ Owen Williams, Master of the ship Lion. . . . Coffee and
dye-wood. . . . Just come in under a jury-rig. Had been dis-
masted and afterwards becalmed. Heard of this trial from the
pilot in Gravesend. Had taken post-chaises . . .”

I only heard snatches of his answers.

“On the twenty-fifth of August last I was close in with the
Cuban coast.... The mate, Sebright, got boiling water for
them. ... Afterwards a heavy fog. “They boarded us in many
boats... .” He was giving all the old evidence over again,
fastening another stone around my neck. But suddenly he said:
“This gentleman came alongside in a leaky dingey. A dead shot.
He saved all our lives.”

His bullet-head, the stare of his round blue eyes seemed to
draw me out of a delirium. I called out:

“Williams, for God’s sake, Williams, where is Seraphina?
Did she come with you?”’ There was an immense roaring in my
head, and the ushers were shouting, “Silence! Silence!” I
called out again.

Williams was smiling idiotically; then he shook his head and
put his finger to his mouth to warn me to keep silence. I only
noted the shake of the head. Seraphina had not come. The
Havana people must have taken her. It was all over with me.
The roaring noise made me think that I was on a beach by the
sea, with the smugglers, perhaps, at night down in Kent. The
silence that. fell upon the court was like the silence of a grave.
Then someone began to speak in measured, portentous Spanish,
that seemed a memory of the past.

“T, the ambassador of his Catholic Majesty, being here upon
my honor and on my oath, demand the re-surrender of this gen-
tleman, whose courage equals his innocence. Documents which
have just reached my hands establish clearly the mistake of which
he is the victim. The fuactionary who is called Alcayde of the
carcel at Havana confused the men. Nikola el Escoces escaped,
having murdered the judge whose place it was to identify. I
demand that the prisoner be set at liberty .. .”

PART FIFTH Aay

A long time after a harsh voice said:

“Your Excellency, we retire, of course, from the prosecution.”

A different one directed:

“Gentlemen of the jury, you will return a verdict of ‘ Not

Bruilty* 2. .”
_ Down below they were cheering uproariously because my life
was saved. But it was I that had to face my saved life. I sat
there, my head bowed into my hands. The old judge was
speaking to me in a tone of lofty compassion.

“You have suffered much, as it seems, but suffering is the lot
of us men. Rejoice now that your character is cleared; that here
in this public place you have received the verdict of your country-
men that restores you to the liberties of our country and the
affection of your kindred. I rejoice with you who am a very old
man, at the end of my life. . . .”

It was rather tremendous, his deep voice, his weighted words.
Suffering is the lot of us men! . . . The formidable legal array,
the great powers of a nation, had stood up to teach me that, and
they had taught me that—suffering is the lot of us men!

It takes long enough to realize that someone is dead at a
distance. I had done that. But how long, how long it needs to
know that the life of your heart has come back from the dead.
For years afterwards I could not bear to have her out of my sight.

Of our first meeting in London all I remember is a speech-
lessness that was like the awed hesitation of our overtried souls
before the greatness of a change from the verge of despair to the
opening of a supreme joy. “The whole world, the whole of life,
with her return, had changed all around me; it enveloped me, it
enfolded me so lightly as not to be felt, so suddenly as not to be
believed in, so completely that that whole meeting was an embrace,
30 softly that at last it lapsed into a sense of rest that was like the
fall of a beneficent and welcome death.

For suffering is the lot of man, but not inevitable failure or
worthless despair which is without end—suffering, the mark of
manhood, which bears within its pain a hope of felicity like a
jewel set in iron... .

Her first words were:

428 ROMANCE

“You broke our compact. You went away from me whilst I
was sleeping.” Only the deepness of her reproach revealed the
depth of her love, and the suffering she too had endured to reach
a union that was to be without end—and to forgive.
~ And, looking back, we see Romance—that subtle thing that is
mirage—that is life. It is the goodness of the years we have lived
through, of the old time when we did this or that, when we dwelt
here or there. Looking back, it seems a wonderful enough thing
that I who am this, and she who is that, commencing so. far away
a life that, after such sufferings borne together and apart, ended
so tranquilly there in a world so stable—that she and I should
have passed through so much, good chance and evil chance, sad
hours and joyful, all lived down and swept away into the little
heap of dust that is life. That, too, is Romance! }

THE END

By Foseph Conrad

Author of ‘Lord Jim,” “ Youth,” etc.

FALK
¢

ALL that magic of word-painting which has
made Conrad’s stories of the sea the wonder of
the literary world is here turned to the showing
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the first story, is the romance of a port-tyrant in
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balism. A more extraordinary study of human
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side, marries a girl there ; and of his tragic efforts
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and is supported in his hopeless expectation by a
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By Joseph Conrad

Author of ‘‘ Lord Jim”

YOUTH
-

Tus book is the success of the season in
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Author of ‘‘ The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ”

THE ADVENTURES OF
GERARD

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Illustrated by W. B. Wollen.

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By Stanley 4. Wepman

Author of “A Gentleman of France”

THE LONG NIGHT
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GRENEVA in the early days of the 17th century;
a ruffling young theologue new to the city; a
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Illustrated by Solomon J. Solomon.

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: Gy Henry Seton Merriman

Author of ‘‘ The Sowers,” ete.

BARLASCH OF THE GUARD
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Tue story is set in those desperate days when
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By Stewart Coward White

THE BLAZED TRAIL
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By KR. C. Young

SALLY OF MISSOURI

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By Gelett Burgess and Wl
Frwir
Authors of ‘* The Picaroons ”

THE REIGN OF QUEEN ISYL
e

Iv “The Reign of Queen Isyl” the authors
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